25 August 2014
Deutsche Welle has signed an agreement with the newly-launched Outernet as an additional content distribution channel. The satellite-based Internet provider promises free access to information.
Outernet is a new platform that was designed to bridge the digital divide and penetrate censored markets by beaming the best content from the Internet via a constellation of nanosatellites in orbit down to every citizen on Earth, free of charge.
“Outernet and Deutsche Welle share many of the same values and goals. It is a clear message to all who wish to censor or restrict access to the Internet,” says DW Director General Peter Limbourg. Because reception is quite easy to access and because the use of many small satellites will make it quite difficult to obstruct signals through jamming, DW’s cooperation with Outernet will be able to “contribute to net neutrality and circumvent censorship,” Limbourg explains, adding, “We hope this will enable us to better reach our users especially in crisis regions and in countries where press freedom is restricted.”
“For Outernet, it is extremely important for us to be globally minded in our content sources – particularly news – from the outset,” says Thane Richard, head of User Engagement at Outernet. “Deutsche Welle represents a very exciting step for Outernet in bridging the global information divide by providing quality news along with other relevant content to our users.”
Outernet is making use of a network of small satellites to transmit selected data – audio, video, text and applications – to simple receivers that users can either purchase or build themselves. All software and hardware required to access Outernet is open source. Once the receiver has the signal, it is rebroadcast locally and content can be viewed on any WiFi enabled device. “No other information channel allows for such a wide variety of content, or broadcasts on a genuinely worldwide scale,” Richard comments.
Outernet officially launched its service in test phase a few days ago. During this early stage, content will be available in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. DW content will be available throughout the entire test phase.
Visit outernet.is to see instructions on how to connect to the signal. (Source: DW press release)
1 July 2014
In the age of big data, Google critics say online services come at the price of freedom. Opponents say old business models for journalism are being redefined by the Internet and the people who use it.
Mathias Döpfner, CEO of media publishing house Axel Springer SE and U.S. Internet expert Jeff Jarvis locked horns in the first main debate at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany. Döpfner says that people pay for seemingly free online services with their freedom, while Jarvis says he’s glad “that Google knows where I live.”
The “Media summit” on the first day of conference focused on the future of journalism and the role of international broadcasters. Also participating in the debate were Salah Negm, Director of News at Al Jazeera’s English channel, Jawhar Sircar, CEO of Indian public broadcaster Prasar Bharati and Peter Limbourg, Director General of Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle.
Jarvis accused Döpfner of calling for state funding to save the faltering business model of paid journalism, rather than concentrating on developing new ideas. In response, Döpfner said his publishing company had already changed radically, and that digital content generates two-thirds of the business’ profits. He said that Axel Springer SE wants to become a leading digital publisher. Speaking to an international audience that included many journalists, Jarvis pointed out that “It’s far too soon to know what the Internet is and that we should define it in analog of our ways in the past.”
In a keynote speech just prior to the panel discussion, Döpfner predicted that “a culture of paying for digital journalism will take root over the next few years. Content that is less valuable will continue to be free, content that is particularly relevant, exclusive or entertaining will be paid for.” He also said it was a misperception that people can access online content for free. “The services which are perceived to be free of charge have a much higher price than money. Those who pay with their behavior, pay in the end with their freedom.”
“My newspaper can’t do that”
According to Jarvis, anyone who wants to be successful online needs to be Google-oriented. Google isn’t a gatekeeper who decides what information reaches people, he said. “It is a platform that enables anyone and everyone to speak.” Jarvis also pointed out that Google has a strict service commitment to its users and the personalized online experience it is developing will be a big part of the future of journalism. “I am happy that Google knows where I live and where I work because I get relevant data back in return. My newspaper has no idea who I am and where I live and where I work and can’t give me relevance.”
Journalism is a mission, not a profession
Debate moderator Tim Sebastian pointed out that not only the business model of journalism faces insecurity, but that journalists themselves are too often in danger, citing the three Al Jazeera reporters sentenced to prison in Cairo without fair trial. On the topic of security for journalists, Salah Negm, called for more solidarity from the international journalism community. Negm said that for him, the future of journalism is less of a technical question. “The most important factor is trust,” he said, “and we have to earn that trust everyday and every minute. I would like to think of journalism not as a profession but as a mission.”
Peter Limbourg, Director General of Deutsche Welle agreed, adding that international broadcasters have a duty to stand up to their responsibility as information providers when national media outlets only show one side of a story. “I think it’s good that we have the Russians, the Chinese and the Gulf states in the market and they should come to us and they should bring their opinions,” he said, “but it’s a vice versa thing. Let me try to broadcast Deutsche Welle in Saudi Arabia. This would be a difficult thing. Let me try to go in and broadcast in China. Or let me go in and broadcast in Russia – everywhere with everything.”
International partners and co-hosts
DW’s national and international partners for the 2014 Global Media Forum include, among others, Amnesty International, Deutsche Telekom, the Grimme-Institut, NATO, the United Nations, the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications and Voices of Africa.
The conference is co-hosted by the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Sparkasse Savings Bank in Bonn. Support is also provided by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the City of Bonn. Cooperation partner is The Right Livelihood College Campus Bonn.
For more information about the conference, go to www.dwgmf.de
13 May 2014
Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, showed record traffic to its online offerings in March. Visits to DW’s sites were up by 47 percent compared with the average for the previous six months.
Nearly 155 million hits and interactions were registered on DW’s sites, more than in any month before. Users on Twitter and Facebook alone jumped 68 percent. Video views on dw.de and Youtube climbed 37 percent. Views on www.dw.de more than doubled, reaching over four million in March.
The dramatic rise can be mainly attributed to DW offerings in Ukrainian and Russian. The crisis in Crimea and Ukraine led to a high demand for DW’s online offerings. The total visits to dw.de/russian grew to more than 6.4 million, a 250 percent increase. For dw.de/ukrainian the total number of visits saw a rise of 260 percent, climbing to 2.2 million.
DW’s Indonesian website (dw.de/indonesian) also contributed to the record breaking figures, registering 700,000 visits, an increase of more than 200 percent. It was largely DW’s coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that brought the increase in traffic to the Indonesian site.
“The numbers reflect the growing relevance of Deutsche Welle in international media markets. At the same time, these figures reaffirm the recent changes to our programming,” said DW Director General Peter Limbourg. “With new offerings and courageous journalism we can significantly expand our audience reach and increase relevance to global decision-makers,” he said.
The strong growth in online traffic also came from the show AlBernameg (The Program) by the Egyptian political satirist Bassem Youssef. The first five episodes of the show were viewed a total of 1.4 million times on the DW Arabic website. They are to date DW’s most frequently viewed web videos.
The Russian-language daily web TV magazine Geofaktor has also contributed to the record online traffic since it was launched on March 15. By the end of the month it had already been viewed 430,000 times. The program was viewed a further 50,000 times on Youtube. In total, Russian-language videos registered about 850,000 views.
The benchmark which Deutsche Welle’s Market and Media Research department used to analyze the monthly reports on online traffic was the average for the six preceding months. (For March 2014, the analysis was based on the average value for the period September 2013 to February 2014.) (Source: Press release)
28 March 2014
Deutsche Welle (DW) will offer audiences worldwide a wealth of content on the Beethovenfest Bonn in 2014. Features in a number of languages are planned for television, radio, online and as podcasts.
As the main media partner at the Beethovenfest Bonn, Deutsche Welle will report on its outstanding concerts and projects while supporting the event with DW’s expertise in international cultural and media affairs.
“The significance of music in our programming is also evident in our role at the Beethovenfest: As one of its partners, we provide access to the festival to people around the world – with TV reports, dedicated pages online, concert recordings and podcasts,” said DW Director General Peter Limbourg.
Audiences can expect coverage that includes reports from the festival and portraits of musicians in many of DW’s 30 languages. Additionally, DW will distribute recordings of the concerts to rebroadcasting partners, including stations in the US, Russia, Turkey and South America.
Orchestra Campus “Beethoven ile bulusma – Encounter with Beethoven”
Turkey returns as the partner country in this year’s Orchestra Campus project, organized jointly by Deutsche Welle and the Beethovenfest Bonn. Concerts, workshops and discussions are planned under the motto “Beethoven ile bulusma – Encounter with Beethoven.” DW’s Turkish Department will help bring that motto to life on its website, www.dw.de/turkish.
The partner orchestra for this year’s project is the Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra (BGSO) under Artistic Director Isin Metin. A highlight will be their September 23 performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony together with a German choir convened from musicians in the Bonn area. Their joint presentation of the Beethoven masterpiece, which includes the message “All men will be brothers,” represents the culmination of a three-year partnership with Turkey for the Orchestra Campus project. At a further concert in Berlin on September 25, the focus will be on the music of Turkish composers.
Composition commissioned from Turkish musician
Each year, DW commissions a new composition from a young musician hailing from the partner country for the Orchestra Campus project. Specifications for the composer include that the new work should creatively take up the influences of the partner country’s music culture as well as draw on the language of Western classical music. The commission, which pays 5,000 euros, went this year to Turkish composer Dr. Tolga Yayalar (*1973). Performances of his work will take place on September 23 in Bonn and on September 25 in Berlin under conductor Isin Metin.
DW will follow the world premiere with extensive coverage, including a televised portrait of the composer. Partner broadcasters in Turkey will also present the concert.
As part of the Orchestra Campus, an outstanding youth orchestra is invited each year from a selected region in the world. Turkey has been the project’s partner country since 2012. Two Turkish youth and university orchestras have been invited to Bonn: the Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Cem Mansur in 2012, and the Istanbul University State Conservatory Symphony Orchestra under conductor Ramiz Malik Aslanov in 2013.
In Bonn, DW will take part in the festival’s public viewing at the central market square. A moderated stage program followed by a live concert transmission is slated for September 7. The concert features the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
www.dw.de/beethovenfest (Source: Press release)
21 January 2014
Deutsche Welle is continuing its restructuring process. The strategy focuses on changes to DW’s language offerings and TV magazines as well as the introduction of dialogue- and comment-based formats.
“In order to reach our goals for the coming four years, we have to create the right conditions in our departments now,” DW’s director general, Peter Limbourg, told staff in Berlin and Bonn on January 20. On January 17, the broadcaster’s leadership agreed on a series of reforms. “They will create the framework in which we can realize our concept of creative and modern journalism and position ourselves as a global information provider based in Germany,” Limbourg commented.
The proposals concentrate on content in English as well as in languages that have proven successful for DW. English is intended to become the journalistic “flagship” language, meaning the English department’s offerings will be expanded to make it internationally competitive. A core goal for DW is more successfully reaching its target audience of decision makers and political opinion leaders worldwide. Meanwhile, the German-language TV channel will be changed to feature more news content and clearer programming structures. “German remains an important language for DW,” said the director general. A German-language community will be built up on dw.de, and Deutsche Welle’s German courses will be expanded.
Limbourg announced that DW will redirect its finances internally so as to reach the areas that are being prioritized, a process that is set to begin step by step this year.
“We aren’t making a clear cut. Instead, we’ve developed a responsible and smart concept that will allow us to achieve our goals and maintain DW’s excellent regional and language competencies,” he said.
Regional priorities, priority languages
The plans are designed to strengthen DW’s English content within the international media landscape. The broadcaster’s regional focus will be on Afghanistan, China and Iran in Asia, as well as Africa, the Arab World, Russia, Latin America, Turkey and the crisis zones within Europe.
Based on these decisions, the linear TV and online content will be heavily expanded in English. DW’s TV news coverage is set to increase significantly, and the news will be broadcast more frequently. DW will reduce the number of shows it produces, while elevating the quality of the remaining formats. In all of its target areas, DW plans to continue offering regionalized content and to increase the number of relevant programming segments. Within the offerings for Asia and Africa, programming will emphasize certain topic areas – for example, there will be a business show for Asia. The necessary regional competence will be secured by retaining journalists from language departments that are being cut or reduced. DW’s social media activity in English will be intensified, and its English-language radio production limited to shows intended for African FM partner broadcasters.
DW will continue to offer original content on television and online in German. However, the expenditures in this area will be reduced, while cooperation with German national public broadcasters ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio will be increased. With its German-language offerings, DW offers a key service for all those who live abroad and speak German, including for German nationals and those with German roots.
Focus on dialogue in regional target languages
Within its online offerings for regional target languages, DW will switch to a personalized blog format featuring dialogue and comment functions that will also be optimized for mobile devices. “We’re after successful journalism that takes a stance, and we’re seeking a direct interaction with our target audiences,” said Director General Peter Limbourg. The current thematic breadth of DW’s online content in these editorial departments, which currently produce comprehensive news and background material, will be left behind in favor of strong commentary pieces from a German perspective.
“In many countries, wide-ranging information is available about Germany, but what’s lacking is context and commentary. That’s what people there expect from Germany’s international broadcaster. We will provide our target users with pointed commentaries on relevant global, regional or bilateral events and developments, communicating German positions on issues and entering into dialogue with them,” the director general said. He added that DW will remain anchored in the respective target areas as a journalistic brand and that its offerings can be flexibly expanded – for instance, when a regional crisis demands it. The regional expertise in the existing foreign language editorial departments is set to remain intact and will be channeled into offerings in English.
Concentrating European expertise
The journalists covering European affairs in individual departments will be grouped into a single European editorial department. It will create regionalized content for European crisis regions, and, at DW’s headquarters in Bonn, it will also produce an emotional and visually expressive TV magazine dealing with European politics. This magazine will serve as a template for adaptation into all of DW’s European languages.
In its global target regions, DW will adapt its activities region by region and change its offerings accordingly.
Departments not set for restructuring
Numerous language departments at DW will remain essentially untouched by the structural changes. However, further work will be undertaken to increase the quality of their offerings and the number of users within the target audience. For example, social media activities will be further developed, and more videos and mobile content will be offered. This goes for editorial departments in the following languages: Dari, Pashto, Farsi, Chinese, Kiswahili, Hausa, Amharic, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese for Brazil, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Greek and Polish – the budgets of which will remain largely unchanged.
Structural reductions
Several language departments face structural changes: Online offerings in Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Romanian and Serbian will be switched to a personalized, dialogue-based blog format with comments. The European TV magazines in these languages will be maintained, but radio broadcasts in Albanian and Croatian will end.
In the future, DW will address its target groups in India and Pakistan primarily in English. Manthan, a science magazine format for TV in Hindi, will continue, but the Hindi website will be shut down. Radio offerings in Urdu will focus on the educational Learning by Ear program, and Urdu-language evening radio broadcasts will be preserved for the time being. Both the radio broadcasts via shortwave and the website in Urdu will shut down.
The Indonesian science magazine for TV, Inovator, will initially continue, and checks will be undertaken to see whether parts of the new English TV channel can be subtitled in Indonesian. The Indonesian website will also be reduced to a personalized, dialogue-based blog format with comments. The same goes for the French for Africa website. Production of radio broadcasts in French will be switched back to FM formats for selected partner broadcasters in Africa.
Discontinued offerings
Deutsche Welle will end its offerings in Bengali and Portuguese for Africa. However, the regional expertise available in these departments will not go to waste. Some staff members from the Bengali department will be employed to strengthen English-language TV and online offerings for Asia. Similarly, members of the Portuguese for Africa department will join the team producing English-language content for Africa. Their language skills will also be of use in the new Europe department and potentially in the Portuguese for Brazil team.
Changes to TV magazines
The management at DW also put all of the TV shows that DW produces and broadcasts up for scrutiny. The major criteria were the extent to which the TV magazines enhance DW’s profile and what their potential scope is. As a result, the decision was made to end the shows PopXport, Agenda, World Stories, Germany Today, Insight Germany, People and Politics, Kino and Talking Germany in the future. This applies to the editions of these shows in all four languages in which DW broadcasts linear TV, namely German, English, Spanish and Arabic. The topics covered in those programs will be explored in other content. The business magazine Made in Germany and the talk show Quadriga will be fundamentally reworked and restructured.
The programs Euromaxx, Tomorrow Today, Global 3000, In Focus, In Good Shape, Drive it!, Shababtalk, On the Pulse, Discover Germany, Shift, Kick Off! and Kick Off! Countdown, Europe in Concert, European Journal, Arts.21, Business Brief, The New Arab Debates, Claves, Treasures of the World, Close up and Faith Matters will continue to be produced in all their current language versions.
Deutsche Welle will strive to bolster its TV offerings by introducing interactive formats and a talk show that will further enhance the broadcaster’s reputation. Consideration will be given to which ideas developed by DW staff members could be put into practice for the TV station.
Further steps
The cornerstones of the new strategy and the measures necessary to put it into place will be included in Deutsche Welle’s planning from 2014 to 2017. At the latest, their implementation will begin once the Broadcasting Board has formally approved the plans.
In the coming weeks, DW will clarify in more detail what the proposed measures will mean financially and in terms of personnel. In some areas, such as the English department, staff numbers will increase. It cannot yet be determined to what extent jobs will be lost, because it remains unclear how much of a grant the German federal government will provide to DW. The broadcaster’s management will do all it can to retain as many of its employees as possible.
