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.

 

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.

DW Akademie is staying ahead of the learning curve and has designed a new trainee program that opens a door of opportunity  for a talented group of young and international media professionals. DW’s new international traineeship uses a multilingual and multimedia-oriented approach with televison, radio and online, providing graduates with the skills they need to succeed in today’s global media landscape.

Admission is competitive and if selected, you will be part of a distinctive learning community among international colleagues who will share your passion for media and world-class training in journalism. You will also be exposed to a broad spectrum of disciplines and professional backgrounds while expanding your horizons in a stimulating, internationally diverse atmosphere.

A traineeship with DW is also about being active and putting practice first. Trainees have the resources of Germany’s international broadcaster at their fingertips and will get the opportunity to work with DW’s editorial departments in Bonn and Berlin as well as internships abroad with DW’s foreign bureaus in Moscow, Brussels or Washington D.C.

This year 12 candidates will be accepted into the 18-month program. Think you have what it takes? Applications are now being accepted and the deadline is October 31. You can also put yourself to the test right now and try out the general knowledge quiz used for candidates in 2013.

An important part of DW’s mission is sharing its 60 years of journalistic and media experience with the world. DW has organized a number of events at the 2014 Global Media Forum in cooperation with organizations and partners which represent the high level of expertise at Germany’s international broadcaster.

Complementing the focus of this year’s conference is a panel organized by the DW Akademie that explores the state of participatory and community-based media in developing countries. The session titled, The power of the neighborhood: How local media organize participation and how DW Akademie supports this, showcases three projects that foster grassroots journalism from partner organizations that span the globe – Welad Elbalad Media Services from Egypt, Open Development Cambodia and Plataforma de Periodismo from Colombia.

With a focus on the watchdog role of journalism is a session titled Whistleblowers, activists, journalists: Is advocacy journalism the journalism of the digital age? The panel includes an editor from Zeit Online and a professor of entrepreneurship and media literacy from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. The emphasis is on how digital media allows journalists to shed their neutrality and take an active stance on social issues.

Those interested in the EU and public participation should look at a session titled, Turning disinterest into engagement through innovative media formats.  Hosted by DW in cooperation with the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), the discussion explores innovations in social media and journalism that are combining to increase citizen engagement in social issues, particularly with the context of EU policy and elections.

At the intersection of social media and human rights is a talk hosted by DW titled, Revolution postponed. The Arab Spring and Africa The discussion brings together African social media experts and journalists to analyze the state of social movements all over Africa, whether it is the Arab Spring in the north to political protests everywhere from Angola to Zimbabwe. The panel will explore if the movements have lost momentum and what the future may look like.

 

 

From the expanse of the African wilderness to the streets of Brazil, the training programs from DW Akademie provide journalists with the tools they need to produce stories that make a difference and have a positive effect on their communities.

A new series of workshops is set to begin this summer in cooperation with the Kavango-Zambesi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), located in southern Africa. This conservation area is the largest in the world and stretches across five countries. Journalists from Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have been invited to participate in the 16-month project.

The workshop will be focused on helping to increase awareness through the media of the need to protect the region. Journalists will be trained primarily in bio-diversity and how to better promote protection of species through their journalistic craft. Other issues that will be covered are ecological research, land development, tourism, resource conservation and conflict-sensitive reporting.

In a testament to the effectiveness of DW’s traininig programs, four radio journalists who took part in a DW workshop were recently awarded a Microfone de Prata (Silver Microphone), one of Brazil’s most prestigious journalism prizes. Journalists Gecylene Sales and Eanes Silva, who took part in a 2013 DW Akademie workshop on investigative reporting in Boa Vista, produced the award-winning report on forced prostitution in Amazonian countries. The journalistic production required them to use skills they learned with DW Akademie like doing effective research, conducting sensitive interviews and protecting sources.

Also winning a Silver Microphone were workshop participants Aroldo Bruce and Alcinio Limo, who produced a report on the struggle of indigenous Amazonian tribes with preserving their cultural identities. The competition for the prize was intense and the fact that two groups of workshop participants were chosen separately,  is something the DW Akademie can truly be proud of.

The proven success of DW Akademie’s training in Latin America and the new partnership with KAZA are just a few ways with which DW is working to improve the world through better journalism.