13 November 2012
The Open Media Summit is DW Akademie’s first open online course. Live video discussions, online resources and social media create a shared learning environment for citizen journalists and bloggers from the Arab world.
From now until December 16, participants in the Open Media Summit can take part in interactive online training sessions on topics such as the responsible use of online information sources, the potential of data-driven journalism and Internet censorship. The main language of the course is Arabic and there is also an English website. Participation in the Open Media Summit (#OMS 2012) is free and it is open to anyone interested from North Africa and other Arab countries.
“Aside from on-site workshops,” says Gerda Meuer, Managing Director of DW Akademie, “the Internet – especially Facebook and Twitter – lends itself to training opportunities for bloggers and citizen journalists.” DW Akademie is testing how e-learning and social media outlets can successfully be combined for shared learning and teaching based on the massive open online course (MOOC) concept. MOOCs are a new educational format currently being widely discussed, especially in higher education circles.
DW Akademie’s Open Media Summit has involved experts from the region and developed the course based on their expertise. “We expect the Internet activists to actively contribute to the educational progress of the participants with their input,” says Meuer, describing the idea behind the project. “Our intention is to bring together the knowledge from the region and pass it on.”
The OMS 2012 is part of a larger project to provide support and training to social media activists from the region and is conducted jointly with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) with funding by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It is the first project of its kind inmedia development activities for the Arab world and ties into Deutsche Welle’s longstanding commitment to online activists and citizen journalists. In 2004, Deutsche Welle initiated the annual Deutsche Welle Blog Awards – The BOBs – and was the first broadcaster in the country to launch its own YouTube channels and Facebook pages.
The virtual OMS campus is online at dw-akademie.de/oms2012. In addition, there is a dedicated Facebook group as well as Twitter feed. Reporters Without Borders supports the online event on topics related to Internet censorship.
http://specials.dw.de/oms-en/
http://specials.dw.de/oms-ar/
Join the Open Media Summit on Twitter: #oms2012
18 September 2012
Deutsche Welle has signed an agreement with the United Nations expanding their cooperation. It is the latest development in a partnership set up five years ago.
DW Director General Erik Bettermann and UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal signed a broadcast agreement on Monday at the UN headquarters in New York, aimed at boosting cooperation in the field of media.
Launsky-Tieffenthal said that “we at the UN are glad that we can build upon our long-term cooperation with Deutsche Welle, which is based on trust. This agreement lets us further expand and deepen that cooperation.”
Speaking for Deutsche Welle, Bettermann stressed that “the promotion of human rights, participation and democratization is a central aspect of our multimedia programming in 30 languages, just as it is for the UN. Cooperation between DW and the UN is particularly important for us because of this shared sense of purpose. We will be glad to continue working together in the future as well.”
The agreement enables DW to supplement its television programming with materials from UN-produced documentaries. DW welcomes this as a way of enriching its internationally-focused television series like World Stories with new perspectives and high-quality reporting from around the world.
Available in English, Spanish and Arabic, World Stories draws on content from DW’s premium partners and presents highly captivating stories around the globe.
DW’s globalization magazine Global 3000, broadcast in German, English, Spanish and Arabic, is a prime example of this cooperation: Deutsche Welle has been able to include selected UN materials in the program, and, in turn, the UN’s television station, UNTV, has broadcast Global 3000 since the partnership was set up in 2007.
Beyond television, bilateral cooperation has grown in many other fields in the past five years including media partnership for UN events, media workshops ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit, involving UN experts in DW’s annual conference Global Media Forum, and integrating UN-relevant topics into DW’s multimedia projects such as Education for All, Voices from Today – Ideas for Tomorrow, or the educational program Learning by Ear for Africa.
Moreover, DW Akademie has opened its media training programs to UN staff. In cooperation with UNESCO, it conducted a series of training projects at universities in Morocco, Kenya andSouth Africa, and on behalf of the UNDP, DW Akademie provides media training to parliamentarians from Moldova. This year it is also planning radio workshops for UN reporters based in Darfur.
6 September 2012
Deutsche Welle’s new science and technology show is produced
in Hindi and will be aired for the first time in India on September 8.
Deutsche Welle (DW) launches its first television series in Hindi on September 8. “Manthan” will focus on science, technology, the environment and medicine and will be aired every Saturday at 10:30 a.m. on Doordarshan National (DD-1) – the flagship channel of India’s national broadcaster and the most widely available terrestrial television channel in India.
“This is a milestone for DW in India,” said Petra Schneider, DW’s Director of Sales and Distribution. “We have been offering news content in Hindi for nearly 50 years now and providing television programming with a local emphasis was a logical next step.”
Manthan is produced by DW’s Hindi team in Bonn and will cover all aspects of science and technology – with a special focus on the latest developments in
Germany and Europe. The show anchor is Isha Bhatia from Chandigarh.
In addition to presenting the latest scientific developments, the Manthan team will also report on the different aspects of everyday life in Germany and comment on
the sometimes surprising differences between Germany and India. Multimedia content from the series will also be available online at DW’s Hindi website, www.dw.de/hindi, as well as being distributed by DW’s online partners.
Doordarshan is India’s public broadcaster with more than 26 satellite channels and 1,135 local terrestrial transmitting stations. It provides television services to
more than 140 million homes in India. In addition, the DD DTH platform, a free-to-air service, is received in more than 10 million households. DW – the 24/7 English news and information channel of Deutsche Welle is also available on this platform.
In late 2011, Tripurari Sharan and Erik Bettermann, the Directors General of Doordarshan and Deutsche Welle signed a comprehensive partnership agreement to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the field of television.
8 August 2012
Persian and Russian joined the list of languages available in Deutsche Welle’s Media Center in July 2012.
The Media Center – a digital archive that has been seamlessly integrated into the DW news website – offers a huge collection of audio and video material. It is a modern, user-friendly way to access and search information on a wide range of topics from current affairs, business, science, education, entertainment to lifestyle, music and German language courses.
DW launched the Media Center in November 2010. Besides Persian and Russian, it already includes German, English, Arabic and Spanish. Deutsche Welle plans to add still more languages, such as Chinese, Ukrainian, Turkish, Portuguese for Brazil, Bosnian, Hindi, Serbian and Indonesian.
Online users can access audios, as well as individual programs as videos on demand. There are also picture galleries, podcasts and live streams from DW’s six television channels.
Users can obtain more information on related subjects by clicking on the various tags accompanying the stories. They can also share the content through links to social media such as Facebook or Twitter.
www.dw.de
9 July 2012
Adelheid Feilcke was appointed by Director General Erik Bettermann to head of Deutsche Welle’s Culture Department, effective July 1, 2012. Her successor as head of International Relations is Klaus Bergmann.
Adelheid Feilcke (50) joined Deutsche Welle in 1992 and became the founding head of the Albanian Service. She has worked as a trainer for DW Akademie since 1995. She studied cultural anthropology and has been involved in media since 1981. After obtaining her high school diploma, she was an intern at the Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag and then worked until 1984 as an editor in Flensburg and on the island of Sylt. She subsequently studied music, theater, film and television as well as anthropology in Cologne and as a DAAD scholar in Tirana, Albania. She obtained her master’s degree in ethnomusicology in 1990 and a second degree in cultural management at Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg in 1993. During her time as a student, she worked as a freelance journalist and cultural manager for regional and national radio stations such as WDR and for the State Music Council of Schleswig-Holstein.
Klaus Bergmann (58) has been the head of DW’s EU representative office in Brussels since 2009. He will continue to serve in that function as part of his new assignment as head of International Relations. After studying law at Münster University, he first worked as a lawyer and then as a human resources officer for the American international broadcaster Radio Free Europe in Munich. In 1991, he became head of the Human Resources Department for DW in Cologne and two years later took charge of administration at DW’s production facilities in Berlin.
