When Google closed its popular Picnik online photo editing service earlier this year, there must have been a collective internet cry of “No!”. For journalist trainees Picnik was a great way of introducing the basics of photo editing, and it was available in several languages. So, what can fill the gap? Enter PicMonkey. Oh and by the way, it’s easy to use and it’s free.

read more

For the owners of small news websites and blogs it remains a major issue – how do you use Google and other search engines to get more people to come to your site? After all, even the most entertaining article in the world is useless if nobody reads it. We spoke to Sebastian Katthoever, from the strategic planning section of DW’s New Media department, about how Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) really works.

read more

Le Tchad marque t-il le pas dans le respect de la liberté de presse ? Depuis quelques temps plusieurs journalistes tchadiens font l’objet de menaces et de sanctions de la part de NDjamena. Parmi eux, Eric Topona, journaliste à la radiotélévision publique et président de l’Union des journalistes du Tchad. L’ancien stagiaire de la Deutsche Welle, dit ne plus se sentir en sécurité dans son pays.

read more

Your choice of headline – whether for online or print media – can really make or break your story. No matter how exclusive your interview, or how fascinating your scoop – if your headline is boring or awkward you will have reduced the number of people who click on your article or turn to your story.

Not just for this reason, some reputable newspapers and news agencies around the world have their own headline specialists – experienced editors who focus on just drafting headlines. But if, like with most of us, you always have to write the headlines for your stories yourself, what are the things you should keep in mind?

read more

Google has become the search engine number one in many regions of the world. However, that doesn’t mean that users always search effectively. We will show you how to make enquiries that bring you to desired results in seconds.

Why searching Google can make you furious

For many journalists, internet research means just typing in the topic they want to learn more about without really thinking of what exactly they want to find out. The problem is, there’s so much information out there that you don’t have enough time and patience to look through all the results Google delivers, not to speak of the time you need to really study all the sources in depth.

read more

At this year’s Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, we met up with Danh-Quy Nguyen, a Vietnamese who studied in Germany and now works as the Deputy Managing Editor for ELLE Vietnam. A few years ago, Danh-Quy was one of the first to receive a scholarship for the two-year Master’s program “International Media Studies” at DW Akademie.

You graduated from DW’s International Media Studies program last year. Now, you’ve been invited back as a guest and expert for a panel-discussion at the DW Global Media Forum. How does that make you feel?

Firstly, I feel great and honored to be invited by my teachers and colleagues. I think it’s an experience that not everyone can have. So I feel very happy. Secondly, I’m also very happy to see my old friends and many colleagues from Deutsche Welle.

What do you miss most about Germany?
What I miss most from Germany is lots of trees, lots of green and the Rhine River.

Can you apply the knowledge that you learned at DW to your work in Vietnam?
Of course! I learned a lot at DW and I use it in my work every day. The most important thing I learned from the DW Master’s program is how to communicate with people from different countries and different cultures. This is very important for my daily job. As Managing Editor, I have to communicate with different editors and people from the fashion industry all around the world.

read more

In the previous blog post on training mobile journalism, freelance trainer Guy Degen discussed smartphones and operating systems, useful free apps for training courses and managing installation of apps for trainees.

This blog post will look at some basic phone settings trainees should know, what to think about when developing a workflow for producing multimedia content with a mobile phone; editing and managing content produced by trainees in the field, tips for mobile journalism training assignments and some useful accessories for training.

read more

A good interview should be informative, authentic, credible and sometimes even surprising. In the past two weeks, the participants in our workshop ‘Advanced Interview Training’ were able to discover the special benefits of this journalistic format.

Together with my colleague Uli Köhler, I am training journalists in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. Our 15 trainees  work for Vietnam Television (VTV). Most of them are reporters in Hanoi, but we’ve also got the VTV correspondents to Russia and to China in our group. All of our participants are keen to learn more about conducting interviews and recording vox pops.

As Uli and I will leave Vietnam in a couple of days, the trainees are now working on their final productions. Their topic is ‘same-sex marriage in Vietnam’. They chose this topic themselves after an hour-long discussion.

read more

Using Google Alerts and Google custom search is an easy way to stay abreast of your beat and receive personalized results for your searches.

Unlike Google Reader and similar RSS-readers, Google Alerts doesn’t provide you with all the content from a specific site.

Instead, it searches the web for new entries which correspond to the keywords defined by you. The only thing you need to do is to set up the alert and check your emails for news from Google.

read more

In the first part of our series about the vox pop, we discussed the pro’s and con’s of the vox pop as a journalistic format. Now, let’s get down to the actual business of making a vox pop.

Before you decide to produce a vox pop, you should make sure that the topic lends itself to this format. The spectrum of possible topics ranges from politics, business, sports and religion to social issues and everyday problems.

The best topics for vox pops are controversial issues that move the people. With these kinds of issues, you can be fairly sure that the answers you get from the people will be varied, interesting and usable. But other topics, such as consumer behavior, recreational activities, etc. are also possible.

What’s important is that the issue must be topical and of general interest. If only a minority of your listeners is interested in the topic of the vox pop, you run the risk that the majority of your audience will switch off. And it is very difficult to win back lost listeners.

read more