The 2014 DW Global Media Forum (GMF) will focus on the transformative power of the Internet and its effect on modern media, governance and political participation.  A collection of intriguing individuals active in media and government will provide insight, understanding and shed new light on these critical issues.

Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland ,will be delivering a keynote speech following opening remarks from DW Director General Peter Limbourg.  Also attending as a special guest will be the Egyptian political satirist Bassem Youssef, host of the widely-popular and controversial comedy news show El Bernameg. Other special guests include German Foreign Minister, Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier and humanitarian activist Auma Obama.

The Media Summit at the GMF will get to the core of the issue at hand with a panel of distinguished individuals from German and international media. Delivering a keynote speech will be the CEO of Axel Springer Germany, Mathias Doepfner.  Panelists will include Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC World Services Group and Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network, Dr. Mostefa Souag.

Another highlight will be a panel discussion on transatlantic relations with panelists that include Senior Editor for Foreign Policy at the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Cornelius, Editor-in-Chief of RTL television, Peter Kloeppel and DW Chief Political Correspondent, Melinda Crane.

You can see the entire guest list here.

DW has made a big impression at two American flim festivals in April. Multiple productions from DW have taken home a total of 14 awards at both events.

Productions from DW stood out at the New York Festivals International TV & Film Awards in Las Vegas, winning a total of seven awards in six categories.  The awards are among the premier international distinctions that can be received in the television industry. Winning Silver World Medals were the DW classical-music documentary films Schumann at Pier 2, which won medals in both the Arts and Feature Films categories, and The Colón Ring – Wagner in Buenos Aires, which won silver in the Documentaries category as well as picking up a Bronze World Medal in the Arts category. Also winning a Bronze World Medal in the History and Society category was the KickOff! special production- 50 years of the Bundesliga.  Winning Finalist Certificates were the Euromaxx series Europe28 in the Travel and Tourism Category along with a video feature news report, Robert, Helene and the Horrors of Oradour in the Heroes category. The awards ceremony was a part of the 2014 NAB entertainment trade show. The two latest awards for Schumann at Pier 2, make a total of 14 that the film has received.

At the 47th annual WorldFest–Houston a rich variety of DW productions won seven “Remi” awards. Many took home a platinum Remi, the highest distinction for each sub-category. Winning a platinum in the Lifestyle Programming– Series category was the 10-part series PopXport special. Other platinum winners in the TV Series- Documentary category were the Brazil and Japan segments of the human interest special Coming Home.  Also taking platinum in the Cultural/Historical Program category was Tracing the Past- German-Jewish Cultural Heritage and again on the list Robert, Helene and the Horrors of Oradour in the Historical Programming Segment category.

Another two-time winner with a gold award in the Documentary category was The Colón Ring – Wagner in Buenos Aires. Also picking up a gold in the Individual On-Camera Talent category was the Euromaxx special Germany by Scooter hosted by Micheal Wigge. Last but not least was Strangers- 6 years later, which won silver in the Documentaries category. The WorldFest- Houston is one of the oldest film festivals in the world and this year DW was among 4,500 entries from 33 countries.

The Internet is an open frontier for creative media. By cooperating with partners who are developing innovative media applications, DW is finding new ways to present and reformat content. One of the latest collaborations is with Flipboard, an innovative App that allows users to curate an online “personal magazine”.

 The winner of Apple’s 2010 App of the year features a novel yet simple functionality and with one click, users can “flip” an article or other online content onto a personalized platform that has an attractive magazine style layout. DW news content in 14 languages is now available for use with the App and each website is presented in a magazine format with a “cover story” that updates automatically. Flipboard reflects the diversity of DW’s news services with a variety ranging from Arabic to Chinese and Russian. By clicking on an article, users are redirected to the DW website. The partners at Flipboard are already enthusiastic about the attractive layout of the sections prepared by DW’s marketing team. Flipboard’s user-generated magazines provide a great example for how audiences can take control of their content.

In another exciting partnership, a team from DW has recently been working with developers at Microsoft to ensure that online content from DW is featured prominently on Bing news, the sleek online news application now included on all Windows 8 devices. There have been over a million page views since DW first went online in German with Bing news last month. Content from DW in 11 languages is set to be integrated into the App in the coming weeks. DW is keeping an eye on the horizon and will continue to play a part in more exciting and creative developments with online media in the future.

Europe

DW and the Russian search engine Rambler.ru have expanded their ongoing cooperation. Rambler, one of the Russia’s top three most popular web portals and a longtime DW premium partner, now includes a selection of news teasers from DW’s Russian website on its news platform. In March the links drew around 600,000 visits to DW’s Russian website in two days.

A compact web version of DW’s Russian news magazine Geofaktor has also been well received by Russian-speaking audiences. The 10-minute online format was recently created as a response to the increased demand for information in regions affected by the current political and social tension between Russia and Ukraine. It took only three days for the format to go from concept to reality– an excellent cooperative achievement for DW’s editorial, distribution and multimedia departments. The modified Geofaktor receives between 30,000 and 100,000 views every day.

Asia

The Indonesian DTH provider BiG TV is now broadcasting DW around the clock. The English language channel from DW is included in each of BiG TV’s five basic programming packages. The provider bundles 177 channels from all over the world and broadcasts them via satellite to subscribers everywhere in Indonesia. In the next two years, the company estimates it will reach 300,000 subscribers.

Noor Communications from Lahore, Pakistan is a new DW partner. Located in Pakistan’s second largest city, the station provides around 55,000 households with DW’s English TV programming.

 

 

There were more than 3,000 submissions to this year’s Bobs awards. Our jury is currently selecting this year’s finalists and users will be able to scroll through 14 language’s worth of interesting and inspiring people’s work starting April 2. The Bobs’ jury members will get together for two days of discussions starting on May 4 to decide on the winners of the 2014 Jury Awards. They’ll dig into the details of each of the nominees before reaching their verdict in the six multilingual categories.

On April 2, we’ll also start the online voting phase at www.thebobs.com for the People’s Choice Awards in all the contest’s categories.

The Bobs awards honor websites and projects  in 14 languages that champion the open exchange of ideas and freedom of expression. When the annual awards launched in 2004, blogs were just beginning to establish themselves as a new type of media and The Bobs aimed to show that this new form of communication was worthy of being taken seriously and to point to the excellent example of work being done online to foster dialogue across language barriers.  The Bobs represent one of Deutsche Welle’s ongoing efforts to contribute to promoting freedom of expression and the upholding of human rights on the Internet and around the world.