In this installment of our Journalists@Work series, we talked to Ljubomir (Leo) Gatdula, a TV producer and reporter from the Philippines. Leo participated in two DW Akademie workshops in 2009, which both dealt with online journalism and web 2.0. The first one was held in Macau, the follow-up workshop took place in Bonn, Germany.

These days, Leo works for People’s Television, which is owned by the Philippine government. In this blog post, he gives us some insight into his work as a journalist in the Philippines.

By Bettina Ruigies

Media outlets should have an idea who's watching them (Photo by 'espensorvik' / flickr)

Today’s fast moving media environment requires a lot of flexibility from media workers. Multimedia skills are a must. Journalists need to be able to produce stories for radio or television, print or online. At the same time, digitization, the Internet and affordable equipment enables anyone who wishes to open a TV station on YouTube or at least run a blog site.

All this technical innovation offers tempting perspectives for hard working and talented journalists. But frustration and failure might set in when it turns out that hardly anybody is watching or reading.

DW Akademie together with Germany’s Robert Bosch Stiftung has wrapped up the selection process for its Meeting and Exchange Project for Indian Journalists . Almost 150 journalists from all across India applied for this project.

Applications are under review by project manager Patrick Benning (left) and head of DW-AKADEMIE's Asia division Dr. Andrea Rübenacker

The call for applications to the fellowship was launched online. The reaction to it by far exceeded all expectations. “We were extremely impressed by the high number of talented and qualified journalists applying,” says project manager Sabina Casagrande who spent two weeks evaluating the applications together with her colleague Patrick Benning. Both project managers admit they would have loved to invite more journalists to participate. “It was heartbreaking to have to reject so many promising candidates,” they say. However, six fellows between the ages of 25 – 35 will be heading to Germany in September for one-and-a-half months of journalistic and intercultural training. They will also be putting together a multimedia project on the topic of sustainability. Here’s a quick peek at the participants:

"Don't wait for the young audience to listen to the radio. Go to where they are – and that means going online and going social networks," says Peter A. Musngi. He is the head of the Manila radio division of ABS-CBN, the largest media company in the Philippines.