Two teams from the News UK Digital Academy summer school took to the stage on Friday to deliver their ten minute pitches to a panel of judges including News UK CTO, Christina Scott, News UK Director of Communications, Daisy Dunlop, The Sun Deputy Digital editor ,Will Payne, Unruly’s Global Content & PR Director, David Waterhouse and Deputy Head of TNL Digital, Nick Petrie.

Fourteen aspiring journalists, eight budding developers and four wannabe designers spent the week in two teams working on digital ideas to support our journalism.

The journalists found their own content for the ideas, whilst the designers and developers worked on the technical side of the product.

Each morning, the teams were guided at a morning standup meeting by Nick Petrie and TNL Digital Development Editor Matt Taylor, setting the digital direction for the day and giving advice throughout the week.

During the week the students were also given editorial and technical masterclasses including a Q&A with The Sun editor-in-chief Tony Gallagher, with new Strictly come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas popping in with Dan Wootton.

There were also designer and developer masterclasses, throughout the week.

On Monday, the students started the week at Unruly. After a tour of Unruly HQ and Unruly’s ‘home of the future’, The Sun’s senior product manager, Laura Drysdale, spoke about product development with further sessions on creative branding and coding.

On Tuesday morning the budding designers and developers attended the Tech team meeting to discuss and develop their early ideas. Students also heard from Unruly’s Mike Rawlings on user experience, digital creativity and product testing.

On Wednesday, the group continued to work on their product ideas and attended a networking drinks with journalists from across News UK discussing their product ideas and offering advice on their future careers.

At the final pitches on Friday the teams presented their concepts with feedback from the panel.

The first group developed their concept ‘Times Y’ a Tinder-inspired web-based app for future young Times readers where readers swipe left or right depending on if they like a story or not. A most read algorithm means readers can curate their own front page based on what stories and topics interest them.

The second group’s product ‘Natter’ inspired by The Times City Guides, brings together journalistic content from around a city produced by journalists including trusted restaurant reviews, recommended running routes and more.

Young journalist Hannah McGurk said ”It’s been a really intense week, but we’ve had lots of support and its been great to work with so many creative people. We hope to put our product on a public platform in future.”

Summer school student and designer Alex Madge said: “Subject to them liking my work, I’ve managed to bag myself some work experience at Unruly and even have a job interview with News UK's commercial team, The Bridge, on the back of this week. It’s been a great week.”

The News Academy’s Viv Regan, said ”There’s some very talented young journalists, developers and designers at this summer school. A number have already lined up work experience or earned themselves interviews on our titles. I hope to see many more News Academy graduates carving out careers in the industry in the weeks, months and years ahead.”

The judges were impressed by the professionalism of the presentations and News UK CTO Christina Scott praised the strength of their brands and the amount they had achieved during the week.

You can read more about the News Academy at academy.news.co.uk.