Good news for African human rights and development journalists. The German Development Media Awards have gone global and are now open to reporters from many parts of the world, including Africa. The deadline for submissions is 31 May, 2013.

There are two types of awards up for grabs for African reporters: the human rights journalism award and the People’s Choice photography award.

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All over the world Google is engaging more and more in covering elections and making access to information easier for voters. This is also true for Africa. Following the elections in Ghana in December last year, Google has launched a new hub for the Kenyan elections coming up on March 4. DW Akademie spoke to Ory Okolloh, Google’s Policy and Government Relations Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa, about Google’s work in Africa and its commitment to free and fair elections.

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Google has become the search engine number one in many regions of the world. However, that doesn’t mean that users always search effectively. We will show you how to make enquiries that bring you to desired results in seconds.

Why searching Google can make you furious

For many journalists, internet research means just typing in the topic they want to learn more about without really thinking of what exactly they want to find out. The problem is, there’s so much information out there that you don’t have enough time and patience to look through all the results Google delivers, not to speak of the time you need to really study all the sources in depth.

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Our friend and former participant Femi Adi Soempeno was among the passengers of the Russian Sukhoi jet that crashed near the Indonesian capital on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Femi’s family and those who loved her.

For all of us here at DW Akademie, it was a joy and a privilege to have known Femi. We loved working with her during our 2009 workshop “Online Journalism and Web 2.0”.

During this three-week training course, Femi became friends with Akademie staff and trainers and with the other participants; journalists from Cambodia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines.

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Let’s hear the bad news first: fact is that you’re probably not going to get rich through your blog or website.

But the good news is that depending on the quality of your content, it’s not totally impossible to generate money with your site. And there are a number of ways to do that.

The official term for making money from your site is website monetization. The most popular ways to monetize your site involve putting advertisements on it.

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Content curation helps journalists keep abreast of the latest developments in their beats. It also means that journalists become personal “human filters” for their audiences, offering them more value and insight into what is being posted on the web.

Content curation is not new. In fact, this is something journalists have always been doing by organizing information and presenting it to the public. Still, content curation is new. The role of journalists is shifting from gatekeepers to sense-makers and gate-watchers, says German journalist, Internet expert and DW-AKADEMIE trainer Markus Bösch. That’s where curation comes into play.

By curating content, journalists can embrace new tools which will make their voice heard as well as discover new research possibilities on the web. To get attention, reporters don’t have to produce exclusive content any more. They can also offer their expertise and serve as “human filters” that their audiences can trust.

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Ikongo le Grand court, son maillot jaune flotte au vent, la poussière l’entoure. Il reçoit une passe et tire de toutes ses forces. Mais il a mal calculé : le petit garçon de 13 ans rate le but de quelques centimètres.

Nous sommes dans une école de foot, la seule dans tout le Congo. Plus de 150 élèves essaient d’y apprendre tous les mystères du football pour parvenir à réaliser un jour leur grand rêve : devenir footballeur international. Parmi les pensionnaires : nos stagiaires, l’équipe du Burundi. Prime Gahinja, Jean Bosco Nduwimana et Anaïs Niragira de Télé Renaissance courent presque aussi vite que les jeunes garçons pour enregistrer les meilleures images de leur sujet ultra-mobile. Voici leur reportage :

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Spotlighting women’s issues in South Asia is the focus of a recently introduced multimedia project at Deutsche Welle. Three young female journalists from Pakistan, Afghanistan and India were sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation to help launch the undertaking in Bonn.

Their online dossiers feature reports in Hindi, Urdu, Dari and English on topics such as maternal mortality and healthcare, women’s rights and the role of women in business and society.

“Good journalism promotes positive changes in society,” says Ayesha Hasan of Pakistan, one of the visiting journalists who participated in the kick-off of the Women’s World project in late 2011. Reflecting on the role of free media, Hasan says they “can bring about peace within Pakistan as well as with its neighbors.”

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In a few days time I will be going back to my country having spent four months in Germany. I will be going back a better person having learned a lot, but most importantly, I will be going back as an experienced journalist. And one that has just started to live their dream thanks to the Heinz Kühn Foundation.

The Heinz Kühn Foundation is funded by the state of North Rhine Westphalia and works to support and develop the skills of young journalists. It offers grants to German journalists to travel to developing countries and also offers journalists from developing countries to come to Germany for training and professional development.

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Are you a blogger, Internet activist or a freelance online-journalist from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya or Mauritania? Would you like to participate in a forum to exchange views on the political situation in the region, the role of social media, quality standards in online-reporting, the economic potential of blogging and start a network with your fellow bloggers? If the answer is yes, then consider applying for the DW-Akademie Young Media Summit in Tunis, 28 – 30 November 2011.

The DW-Akademie will bring together 30 bloggers to discuss social media in North Africa. DW-Akademie will cover travel-expenses and accommodation for invited delegates.

To apply, please submit your CV and the link to your blog or website to dwa.africa@gmail.com. Applications close on August 7, 2011.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

The DW-AKADEMIE is the media development, media consulting and professional journalism training division of Deutsche Welle – Germany’s international broadcaster. It offers partners and clients worldwide a broad spectrum of training and consulting services.