DW Academy: helping to promote more diversity in global media

The DW Academy was founded by Deutsche Welle on January 1, 2004. It brings together all departments at the station working in training and education. Essentially, the DW Academy will act as an umbrella organisation for two existing centres for further training in Bonn and Berlin.

The Academy will also be training young journalists just starting out on their careers. Plans are also being drawn up to offer courses for staff from German firms, organisations and institutions from outside the world of broadcasting, who are about to take up jobs abroad, i.e. outside Germany.

DW's director general Erik Betterman says this intercultural media training is designed to equip top German managers with the skills they need to cope with the media when working outside Germany. As Mr Bettermann explained at press briefing in Bonn on January 6th, "Here at the Deutsche Welle, we have staff from sixty countries. They have specialist knowledge that is unique in Germany. We want to make better use of this skills and knowledge base in future -- not just for our broadcasts and internet website -- but also for media training for the broader community."

Training journalists as part of development aid
The key activity of the DW Academy will be the training of broadcasting staff from developing countries. This will be funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development. Staff from the DW centre for further training have been giving courses in radio and television to up one thousand media professionals annually for the last forty years. This is part of strong political commitment to help the developing world strengthen democracy by improving media diversity. The DW Academy intends to strengthen this commitment still further.

The president of the DW Academy is former German MP Professor Joseph Theodor Blank. "This joint commitment by the ministry for economic co-operation and development is often overlooked in the German domestic media. In setting up the academy, we intend to correct this. We also want to make Deutsche Welle better known here in Germany".

Professor Blank was speaking from his experience as deputy chairman of Deutsche Welle's Broadcasting Council.
Young foreign journalists to bridge cultural divide
The head of the DW Academy, Gerda Meuer says that a special course is being set up for young trainee journalists who reside in those parts of the world to which DW broadcasts programmes.

"Then we can be sure of a ready supply of talented, well-qualified young journalists for our thirty foreign language services" she explains. "And those trainee journalists, who will have a keen eye for similarities and differences between cultures, will also be able to make a valuable contribution to the academy's other activities".

6 January 2004
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