At the first RISE – Insights for Leaders event, DW brought together top representatives from Indonesian business and media in Jakarta for the opportunity to share ideas about what is driving Asian infrastructure and development.

At the event in, hosted cooperation with local partner MNC Sky Division, Dr. Roland Busch, a member of the managing board at Siemens, gave an intriguing talk “Smart Solutions for Asia’s megacities” about the future of urban development in Asia. The event provided around 50 Indonesian business leaders and media representatives with a unique opportunity to have first hand contact with one of the world’s leading infrastructure technology developers. The DW business program, Made in Germany, was also featured at the event.

The CEO of MNC, Rudy Tanoesoedibjo, said that the event addressed the challenges facing development in Indonesia while inspiring new ideas. He added that the partnership between Dw and MNC was “raised to a new level.”

RISE strengthens DW’s position as a partner for dialogue in Asian markets and is a perfect example of how DW connects people with information they can use to develop and improve their communities.

It is the first in a series of events that brings a sought-after German perspective on global economics and development to an audience of high-level Asian business leaders. Executives from top German companies will join the next RISE event planned for Delhi, India next month.

Online

The news aggregation app, Smartnews, now includes English-language content from DW. The product of a Japanese startup, Smartnews has 13 million monthly users and was nominated this year for the Google Play Awards in the innovation category.

After expanding cooperation with the censorship circumvention specialists, Psiphon, DW’s Farsi news content is reaching more people in Iran. In one month, more than 85,000 daily users have been able to access DW’s independent and accurate global news coverage using Psiphon’s desktop and mobile technology. DW has worked with Psiphon for several years to deliver content to places where local sensors block international news.

Asia

The most advanced IPTV provider in India has acquired DW’s English-language channel, DW, for its channel package. Bangalore-based LukUp Media operates a “light stream” network that keeps transmission costs low and makes LukUp content more affordable for a wider group of consumers. In its first year of operation LukUp has added 150,000 subscribers.

DW is now on the OTT platform My Super TV in Hong Kong operated by the pay TV partner TVB. DW’s  English-language channel, DW, will be available along with other international providers.

The second-largest cable provider in Pakistan is carrying DW. Tri Star cable in Lahore broadcasts the DW’s English language channel, DW, to more than 100,000 subscribers. And DW is being carried by a new cable partner in Mardan, Pakistan. Mardan Cable Network is the largest provider in the city with 35,000 subscribers.

 

Europe

DW’s Focus on Europe is now being broadcast in Georgia in cooperation with local broadcasting partner Starvision. The European culture and political program will be broadcast weekly with a Georgian-language voiceover and the program design will be adapted for the Georgian market. Starvision reaches 700,000 viewers and is also available on a free app for iOS and Android. This partnership expands DW’s presence in Georgia, where DW’s Russian-language news program DW Nowosti is currently being broadcast by Georgia’s national public broadcaster.

Latin America

WIPR, Puerto Rico’s largest public broadcaster, has expanded cooperation with DW and will soon be broadcasting more DW programming. WIPR currently broadcasts Euromaxx and DW Noticias during prime time. The channel, which focuses on educational and cultural content, can be received by more than 1,6 million households in Puerto Rico and will significantly increase the reach of DW’s Spanish-language programming.

Brazilian partner Claro will be providing DW’s German-English language channel DW (Amerika) to all of the Olympic villages in Brazil during the 2016 summer games.

The Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro will also be including reports from DW’s Futurando! and Camarote.21 in its “Anthropozän” exhibit, which is visited over 100,000 times each month.

Guatemalan news website Siglo 21 has embedded DW content boxes in Spanish with articles and videos from Enlaces, Cultura 21, Global 3000 and En forma.

North America

Three Spanish-language programs from DW are being carried on Telecentro, a Hispanic-American broadcaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Telecentro reaches 30,000 households.

Africa

DW (Deutsch) will now be available in 10 countries in southern Africa via pay-TV partner Multichoice. Countries included are South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland und Zimbabwe. The channel will also be available to Multichoice hotel subscribers.

Angola’s first private television broadcaster, TV Zimbo, is broadcasting Futurando!, Camarote.21 and Africa on the Move in Portuguese. TV Zimbo will also become a coproduction partner for Euromaxx. The partnership is a positive step into a broadcasting market that had previously been inaccessible due to political conditions.

Asia

Over 100 hours of high-quality documentary content from DW Transtel have been acquired by the Chinese educational video program supplier “Wuhan Yuanlai Educational“, which provides video on-demand for universities and schools across the nation. Now millions of students in China can easily download general knowledge and cultural documentaries from DW Transtel. The English and German-language programming will be provided with subtitles in Mandarin Chinese.

DW’s automotive program Drive it! is being now carried by the Indonesian pay TV network K-Vision. The program will be shown with Indonesian subtitles on the “Otomotif” channel, which reaches 450,000 households across the country.

The Pakistani cable television broadcaster, Webcom PTV is now a DW partner and will provide 20,000 subscribers in Islamabad with DW’s English channel.

Online

DW is now broadcasting its English channel live on YouTube, thereby becoming one of the first international news channels to make use of this feature.

Online articles in English from dw.com are now being included amongst a wide variety of content from quality international news and information outlets on RealClearWorld. The news website from the USA features coverage, opinion and analysis of current events from around the world. It attracts 5.9 million unique visitors every month.

A consortium of international broadcasters recently met at DW’s headquarters in Bonn to discuss internet censorship. The DG 7 Internet Freedom Group brought together experts from the BBC, BBG, FMM, RNW and DW for two days to exchange ideas and discuss the importance of freedom of information online.

Europe

DW’s critical talk format Nemtsova.Interview is now being broadcast by NewsOne in the Ukraine. According to Nielsen, NewsOne is ranked amongst the most popular channels in the country.

Artificial intelligence, data technology and mobile devices have huge potential in advancing the way journalists use and disseminate information. However, bringing innovation into newsrooms requires streamlined applications that journalists can easily use. With a wide network of partnerships and many big ideas, DW’s innovation team is working on an array of research projects to develop tools that will be changing how we produce and consume journalism. These projects were on display at the “Innovation Lounge” during the 2016 Global Media Forum, where guests could experience new tools and technologies hands on.

After looking at the research and development being done at DW Innovation, it becomes clear that journalists need solutions for using and interpreting large amounts of data and information coming from many sources, languages and formats. There is more information available than ever before and the key is turning information into interesting stories.

Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology, being pioneered by start-ups such as Narrative Science, turns data into readable reports. Applying this to journalism, DW’s innovation team is currently working on a new project called PollyVote, which for the first time is developing tools to transform polling data into automated news reports for the 2016 US presidential election. Research done by DW Innovation indicates audiences tend to respond positively to these automatic reports, citing a study that ranked them as informative, trustworthy and accurate.

Besides having raw data as useable information, journalists also have a huge variety of news sources at their disposal. At the intersection of big data, automation and multimedia production is News Stream, a joint project being developed by Fraunhofer IAIS, Neofonie GmbH, dpa and DW.

News Stream combines multimedia sources on one platform so journalists can quickly find exactly the information they need to create the best possible content. From pinpointing audio clips to digging quotes out of manuscripts, journalists can access all possible content on a news item in one place.

For example, News Stream uses voice recognition technology that can identify the subjects voice in a recorded press conference and send an automatic e-mail to the journalist with the desired quote. It also allows for automated research covering social media, agency sources and other news outlets. Journalists can even monitor in real time how the competition is reporting on a news item in real time.

According to the team at DW Innovation, at the moment News Stream has the potential to help journalists create better content more efficiently, but the most important step still is integrating these tools into newsrooms.

Adding to the journalists’ innovation toolbox along with raw data aggregation and source integration are methods for working with social media and eyewitness media as a news source. Both present problems of verification, but are becoming indispensible for fast-breaking news stories.

Reveal is a EU-supported project focused on dealing with social media verification. Multiple partners, including DW Innovation, work on tools, methods and technologies that will  support journalists with the verification of online news items.

As part of the project, DW Innovation has developed a verification checklist for DW and media partners like ARD and EBU that outlines the fundamentals of how to use eyewitness material in news reports. This helps journalists everywhere make better decisions about breaking news content and produce trustworthy reports. There is furthermore a growing niche verification industry with examples like First Draft News, which brings together a variety of verification resources, or Storyful, which curates viral content and provides verification of UGC and social content for news outlets.

In order to continue its work in this field, DW Innovation has secured funding from Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI) to build a collaborative social media verification platform and to launch another EU co-funded project called inVid,which specifically develops tools and workflows for video verification.

As the public comes to expect better data journalism and different ways to experience news, these types of innovations that are pioneered at DW will be growing in relevance and presence across our media landscape.