We sent Qurat ul ain Siddiqui, Deputy Editor and Asia News Network (ANN) coordinator from Pakistan's leading newspaper The Dawn, off to Berlin to spend two weeks at Germany's biggest news wire service, Deutsche Presse Agentur (dpa). Her placement was aimed at streamlining cooperation between Germany's news agency and ANN. As a member of ANN, the Pakistani newspaper provides dpa with articles and stories. Here, she shares her experiences.
"I’ve had my brush with Berlin once before and it was a fine coincidence that my editor assigned me with the task of going to the German capital again – this time to work with the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) for a period of two weeks as a Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung fellow. I saw this as an opportunity to know the city better as well as to work with a group of highly qualified journalists at one of Europe’s most esteemed news agencies.
The stint was more than rewarding and the methodologies that my colleagues were working with developed my perspective in relation to improving news management in today’s continually evolving newsrooms.
My time at the DPA’s central news office in Berlin was also aimed at understanding how Germany’s biggest news agency operates and at exploring avenues of improved cooperation between the organisation and the Asia News Network (ANN) of which my employer, Pakistan’s Dawn media group, is a member. I was also looking to acquire new skills to implement on how we can add more value to the work that the ANN has already been doing.
One of the key features I noticed while with the DPA was the news management system that the wire agency uses. Partly developed in-house, the software gave the taste of working with an alternative news management system with reports coming in from DPA’s various desks from across the world. Mr Nick Ragillo, chief of DPA’s English news service, and his team were kind enough to help me understand the system’s varying features - starting with planning and up to the sending of a story to DPA’s clients. A system along similar lines can also be designed for the ANN to be used at some stage in order to enhance and improve news coverage of Asian affairs.
Having observed the DPA’s focus on info graphics, photos and interactive content aimed at adding value to news reports, I believe similarly engaging approaches can be adopted by various ANN members in order to ensure comprehensive coverage of countries in the region.
Another feature which is key to how the DPA works and which can be of immense use to ANN is the style of editing and writing of stories. This is done in a manner meant to reach out to a global audience. For instance, a reader based in Pakistan or India should be able to understand a news story on an event in Tokyo or Seoul almost as well as a local reader. This approach would ensure in achieving ANN’s objective of improving news coverage and understanding of the Asian region.
Also, with its keen interest in Asia, an impression that I formed following discussions with Mr Ragillo and Mr Michael Ludewig, head of DPA’s foreign news service, ANN and the German wire agency can look to come to an arrangement where the two can share resources when it comes to major events of regional and global significance, be it the elections in a volatile Ukraine, the coup d'état in Thailand or the coming government in India.
Back in Pakistan after the fellowship and as a coordinator for the Asian network, apart from implementing what I learnt during my time with the DPA, I really hope that collaboration between Germany’s biggest news agency and the ANN reaches a point where the two can create a platform to make a more holistic narrative available to their readers."