Earlier this month, the Facebook page of telenovela Jojo Sucht das Glück and multimedia project Destination Europe won top prizes in their respective genres. Jojo Sucht das Glück won a bronze E Learning Award in an international competition hosted by London-based Bizmedia. Destination Europe won an International Media Excellence Award (the AIBs) from the Association for International Broadcasting, also based in the UK.

The E Learning Awards are one of the most prestigious competitions in the industry. DW’s Esther Weingarten accepted the bronze for “Best use of social media for learning” in London.

The Facebook page for Jojo Sucht das Glück not only features supplementary info about weekly episodes. It is also a forum for fans to directly interact with the star of the show and practice their German. Users have even made fan videos about the telenovela and uploaded them to YouTube.

The AIBs honor excellence in international broadcasting, picking winners from entrants all over the world. DW’s Felix Steiner and Klaus Dahmann accepted the award for Destination Europe at a London ceremony.

The Association for International Broadcasting praised the project for its “first-rate multilingual, multi-platform approach, with extensive use of social media to provide real, relevant information to those seeking a better life in Europe.”

DW Akademie believes more should be done for local journalists and that thorough research needs to be recognized. With Investiga DW is introducing a journalism prize in Latin America that should highlight these issues and the journalists that work to ensure them. The competition is open to television, radio and online journalists and the deadline for submissions is April 30, 2012.

The focus will be on reports with a social and political weight – topics that Colombian journalists are sometimes hesitant to tackle. “We’re hoping for a courageous type of local journalism, one that shapes public opinion without being patronizing. This is incredibly important in Latin American countries where media systems are usually centralized,” says Petra Berner from DW Akademie.

DW Akademie will award the winner a ten-day trip to Germany. This will include participation in the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum and discussions with DW staff in Bonn and Berlin. The runner-up will receive a multimedia equipment set, funded by the Universidad del Norte.

In Spanish, “investigar” means to investigate, to research. “We want to motivate local journalists to dig deeper. We’re looking for stories that haven’t been told,” says DW Akademie Director Gerda Meuer.

 

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.

The FIFA Women’s World Cup is in full gear in Germany – and a special project from DW-AKADEMIE is helping to provide more coverage to the feminine side of soccer. DW-AKADEMIE invited eight TV journalists – from Bhutan, Egypt, Palestine, Ghana, Nigeria, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico to take part in a workshop in Berlin. The results from “Reporting the Women’s World Cup 2011” have already been broadcast on ZDF (in German) and Phoenix and are now also available on the DFB website. The team also includes trainees in media design (audio and video) and will produce a total of 20 stories surrounding the Women’s World Cup.

Find out more about DW-AKADEMIE or check out DW’s coverage of the Women’s World Cup.

 

Just a few weeks following the end of the authoritarian regime in Tunisia, Deutsche Welle (DW) has agreed to work with Télévision Tunisienne und Hannibal TV. The two channels will integrate current shows, magazines and background features as part of their programming.

Hannibal TV is one of the largest private stations in the country and has been broadcasting the Arabic version of DW’s Journal since May 1. The station will also be showing the talkshow Quadriga and In Focus – a series of documentaries.

The public broadcaster Télévision Tunisienne also agreed to broadcast DW programming, including the Arabic versions of Quadriga and In Focus, as well as the magazines Tomorrow Today and euromaxx.

In addition, DW-AKADEMIE was included in the partnership agreement and will work with the new partners to help provide journalistic training.