Why you should apply for a journalism traineeship at DW

What’s so special about a traineeship at DW?
It is the only consistently offered bilingual and multimedia journalistic training program in Germany. DW works in 30 languages from Hindi to Swahili and Portuguese. Maybe the United Nations could offer this variety of cultures, mentalities and languages, but not another media company in Germany. 

But that only describes a general framework, what characterizes the training? 
We provide comprehensive training of classic journalistic standards, but we also emphasize everything that will be important for journalists in the future. 

What does that mean? 

DW's current trainees (2016-18)

That means, if you cannot research properly, you cannot become a journalist and this is even truer for those who don’t know how to conduct interviews. These standard journalistic tasks require technical training - which includes everything from research and fact-checking to interview methods and news writing. But we are also focused on the future. For example, we look for new ways to create narratives online, whether it is digital storytelling on a classic website, finding new social media formats, mobile reporting, virtual reality or constructive journalism. 
As DW has focused on online journalism for many years, I think that we have a lot to offer trainees in comparison to other places. This is reflected in the curriculum and we can look back at a wealth of experience in producing online news. 

How can we use these new formats and creative ideas? 
You should be thinking about new formats all the time wherever you work. New formats are based on new trends in digital literacy - and you can't learn this in one seminar, it continually plays a role. Regardless of what I report or want to get across, my first questions should be, "how can I do this differently and what can I do better than other journalists?" Here is where you need to be creative and innovative on the one hand and on the other possess the knowledge, know-how and acumen to independently and confidently use digital tools.