DW Akademie and Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with the University of Istanbul are now offering young German or Turkish media professionals the chance for a world-class education in Istanbul. The International Media Studies (IMS) Turkish-German Master’s program was opened at the end of October during a DAAD conference in Istanbul. Creating the program took three years – from inspiration to accreditation.

Christian Gramsch, Director of DW Akademie, said the program aims to ensure that “independent and crucial journalism can fill its indispensible role in the development of our two countries.”  The director also emphasized the important role of the program as a positive force in Turkish-German relations.  The four-semester program is aimed at students with at least one year of work experience in a media-related field.  The language of instruction is English.

Online

DW has expanded cooperation with Microsoft. Full-text DW articles in 12 languages now complement the rich variety of news content available on msn.com, Microsoft’s global news and information platform. The expansion to msn.com is an improvement on DW’s current cooperation with Microsoft’s Bing News; with better website functionality featuring prominent links to DW online content and advertising potential via a free promo banner that can be adapted to target languages.

Online articles from DW English are now being included on “The Most”, a new online news aggregator developed by The Washington Post. The platform aims to improve user experience with online news by “gathering the most engaging stories from a broad array of top news sources.” The Washington Post boasts 30 million visitors to its website each month.

DW was among a group of international broadcasters meeting in Paris this month to discuss issues surrounding internet censorship. Participants shared ideas on using censorship circumvention systems and discussed possibilities for closer cooperation. Broadcasters at the meeting included VoA, RFA, BBC, RFI, France24 and RNW.

DW is working in cooperation with Fraunhofer IAIS, dpa-inforcom and Neofonie on an innovation project called News-Stream 3.0, which will aggregate big data for journalists. The project develops software tools which make thousands of content sources easy to iuentify and use in newsrooms.

DW content will now be available on Amazon Fire TV and Smart TVs after a new agreement with the Opera Store.  Video-on-demand content in German, English, Spanish and Arabic will now be available on over 300 TV models and BluRay Players.

Asia

DW has a new partner in the Philippines. The IPTV provider SKYTEL will include DW’s flagship English channel, DW, in its programming package. Skytel began operations at the beginning of October and in its first year plans to reach 100,000 subscribers in the Quezon City/Manila metropolitan area.

DW has a new cable TV partner in Pakistan. OK Cable Network, located in the northern city of Nowshera, will deliver DW to around 10,000 households in the region.

North America

Audionow, a leading “call-to-listen” platform in the USA now features DW audio content in English, French, Hausa, Kiswahili, Portuguese and Amharic. Users access content with a telephone by calling a language-specific number.  The service aims to provide diaspora communities with radio news covering their home countries in their native languages.

Europe

DW will now be cooperating closely with the Ukrainian international broadcaster, UTR, after a memorandum of understanding was arranged between the directors of both broadcasters. Media training seminars provided in cooperation with DW Akademie are already in planning.  DW also plans to lend technical expertise and provide video content to UTR in English, Russian and Ukrainian. Additionally, UTR has expressed interest in acquiring journalistic content from DW. UTR was founded 12 years ago and focuses primarily on television production.

DW has a new Russian-language broadcasting partner based in Israel. Channel 9 broadcasts programming to Russian-speaking audiences in Israel via cable and satellite in Germany, North America and Australia.Also called Israel Plus, Channel 9 will now be broadcasting DW cultural programs Arts.21 and Euromaxx Highlights along with the science and environment formats Tomorrow Today and Global 3000. Online news and articles from DW are also to be included on the new partner’s website.  Channel 9 reaches the largest Russian-speaking television audience outside of Russia.

 

Jaafar Abdul Karim, host of DW’s Shabab Talk, uses the program as a platform for sharing ideas and changing minds. A recurring theme on the show is women’s rights and Karim is the right person to shed light on the issue– he was recently named as an ambassador for UN Women.  He is also an active supporter of HeForShe, an international solidarity movement for gender equality that emphasizes the role of men in ensuring equal rights for women. In November Karim will be hosting an event in Bonn organized by HeForShe’s German branch.

Karim’s appointment as a UN Women ambassador also made waves in Arabic media.  “It signals that it isn’t yet exepected for men to stand up for equal rights,” he says. “There are a lot of men in Arabic countries who do not support equal rights between men and women and even some who think it is wrong.” He says that especially in Arabic countries, there is very little media coverage devoted to important social issues like equal rights for women.

Shabab Talk gives young people from the Arab World a place where they can share ideas and DW sets an international stage for Karim where important issues can be discussed and brought out of the dark.  “I think it is important that we at DW provide a voice for equal rights and a platform where everyone can discuss their lives,” he says.

Middle East

DW partners from across the Arab world met in Tunis, Tunisia, with 17 CEOs and program directors of leading broadcasters and online portals from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Oman, Qatar and Tunisia participating. Representatives from DW’s Middle East/ North Africa distribution met with long-term partners and we able to find opportunities for increased cooperation. The largest Jordanian online news portal, Alwakeel News, is now a DW Facebook partner with 3.3 million users in Jordan and DW will also be providing full text content for highly-popular Egyptian online news portal, Almasry Alyoum. For television, a partial re-broadcasting contract was negotiated with Yemen TV.

Africa

Representatives from DW met with 13 radio and online partners of DW Portuguese for Africa in Nampula, Mozambique. The partners were especially pleased about the interactive rubric, Espaço do Ouvinte, which allows for listener commentary and the educational series, Learning by Ear. Numerous partners expressed interested in rebroadcasting older episodes that highlight political participation to complement the upcoming elections in Mozambique. Partners were also interested in developing journalism training programs with DW Akademie.

DW has three new partners in Kenya. Television Cosmopolitan and Health TV Africa will acquire part of the programming line-up from the English channel, DW. News and magazine radio formats from DW Kiswahili will also be broadcast by Radio Mambo. DW is also increasing radio presence in Tanzania. Links to DW Kiswahili are being integrated into the website of local station partner, Fadeco. Tumbatu Community Radio, which was created in cooperation with UNESCO, is now broadcasting DW’s complete Kiswahili radio program. In Uganda, Smart FM, will be broadcasting the English radio programs Africa Link and news once a day from Monday to Friday.

Asia

DW content in Bengali, Hindi, English and Urdu is now available on the popular Indian news App, NewsHunt. NewsHunt is a cross-platform news aggregator briging together content from over from over 100 news sources in 11 languages spoken in India. By its own estimates, 50 million users have installed the App and it is the most used App in India after WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube. It can also be used in website format.

DW has a new cable television partner in Vietnam. The cable provider VGN is now carrying DW Asien. VGN provides international television to foreigners living in Vietnam.

In Sahiwal in the Punjab region of Pakistan, around 30,000 households are now being provided with DW via a new Pakistani broadcasting partner, New Geo Cable Network.

Europe

DW’s European distribution have collaborated with Britain’s elite Cambridge University to provide students with a wide-array of DW resources for learning German, available now on the university’s website. A similar arrangement provides students at the University of Nottingham with an online learning platform composed of DW’s language learning resources.

Latin America

DW has a new programming partner in Mexico. Since July, OPMA, has been broadcasting multiple DW programs every week on its flagship educational station, Canal 30. Global 3000, Enlaces, Europa en concierto, En Forma and Claves are among the programs that have been included. The cooperation is the result of successful negotiations with the Director General of OPMA, Armando Carillo Lavat, during this year’s Global Media Forum. Canal 30 is available nationwide in Mexico via major infrastructure providers like SKY and Cablevisión and can be received by an audience of over 80 million. Since it was founded in 2010, OPMA has been involved with DW and to date has acquired more than 500 programming hours from the DW- Transtel portfolio.

Africa

DW has expanded on multiple partnerships in Nigeria. The pay TV provider CONSAT is including DW in its basic programming package. The newly-founded provider is a part of the media group, Continental Broadcasting Service, based in Lagos. The group’s terrestrial broadcaster, TV Continental, is already a DW partner. On the radio, Brila FM, is acquiring  sports news from DW Hausa for its new station in Kaduna. Brila’s soccer website also includes an English news feed from DW covering Bundesliga and other sports news. Also on the air are multiple DW magazines in English and Hausa being broadcast by Unity FM in Jos, a private station founded in 2013.

Asia

DW has a new IPTV and cable partner in Jakarta, Indonesia. Mora Quatro Multimedia (MQM) is now carrying DW in all five of its programming packages. MQM provides digital cable service to the Tangerang area and is available via IPTV nationwide in Indonesia. DW is also available to subscribers via a mobile TV app and is estimated to reach 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year.

Video on demand from DW is now available on Networkplay Media, a video portal from India that provides video to over 1,000 online publications.