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.

DW Akademie, Deutsche Welle’s international center for media development, media consulting and journalism training, is organizing in cooperation with UNESCO, a “Train-the-Trainer Course” for 12 young lecturers from eight African journalism education institutions. The course is taking place now in East London, South Africa and will run until January 27, and is being hosted by Walter Sisulu University.

Journalism Educators from Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe will share their experiences of teaching journalism with a focus on community media. The aim is for training methods to become more interactive, participative and practice-oriented, thus allowing students to apply newly acquired skills and knowledge directly. The group will also concentrate on community media, which can play an important role in development in Africa.

This training is the first of three courses due to take place in Africa within the framework of a UNESCO/DW Akademie joint initiative to strengthen 20 selected African universities´ capacities to offer high quality journalism education programs for aspiring and working journalists. DW Akademie has put a focus on Africa for 2012.

DW Akademie has been conducting a variety of media development projects to reinforce free and independent media, particularly in developing and transition countries since 1965. Their team of experts advise broadcasting executives, train young, up-and-coming journalists and provide professional coaching to media engineers. Every year around 3,000 individuals take part in DW Akadmie’s training and workshop programs.