dpa is constantly evolving – and on a positive axis. One of the most important milestones last year was our On Profile process. We are analyzing much more closely which of our texts, photos, audios and videos are being used and from that creating outlets for current production. We have worked intensively at developing new products. That is particularly true for Hilke Segbers’ area of custom content and for Roland Freund’s innovation section. And we have operated a very active cost management, particularly under Jutta Steinhoff. We are also working on further developing dpa employees’ skills. Antje Homburger has had a lot of discussions and organized coaching – particularly when it comes to the profile process. And this all centers on the goal of constantly thinking in new ways about: How can we design a good dpa service for our customers?

There are many things to be proud of at dpa but what I’m most proud of is the people who work at dpa. Because every day, sometimes at the risk of their lives or health, they work to ensure that there is genuine, serious and well presented news from across the world. dpa is a global network of people with various talents who work together to create an image of the world that is as close to reality as possible. And that is day in, day out. That is important in this era of fake news and propaganda, either state or corporate, which is constantly trying to present distorted images of the world.

Our work on the federal election was excellent. During the election campaign, on election day and above all in the period following the election. A second example that I want to mention is the political reporting. What our colleagues, with great personal commitment, achieved in Turkey, where a country is sliding from democracy to an Islamic dictatorship, and in the United States, which is on the path to a divided society where people can no longer talk to one another, is really amazing.

You can regard this kind of list as a risk, but we see it as an opportunity. Quite simply because the news is still as important as it ever was. We have to be quicker, more accurate and acquire new, primarily digital, channels as customers. Print still has a future but as a tool for in-depth reporting. We are well prepared for everything, but of course we have to evolve further. We are working toward presenting our news at different times, compared to before when we were more focused on the newspapers’ print deadlines. That means that early in the morning, late at night and at the weekend, when our customers are not so strongly covered, are important new times for us to be active. Networks of editors offer us many advantages. We are in dialogue with other professionals who know exactly what they want and who can also formulate that across many titles. That really helps us in a media landscape that is becoming more complicated.

A very big one. On the surface, many of these things are regarded as being about the Internet, but dpa is behind the scenes. It’s a great development, since it shows what an important supplier of content dpa is, was and always will be. At the same time, of course, it underlines our responsibility. How is this material dealt with? Is it still authentic? Has it been faked? Is it offered in the wrong context? The sustainability and the monitoring of how our material is being used are becoming increasingly important.

Every mistake is of course one mistake too much for us. However, when a mistake is made, then the task is to manage it well. That means being transparent about how it happened and correcting it as quickly and cleanly as possible, as well as communicating about it when that is necessary. Furthermore, it is important not to react to every single provocation. Particularly in digital media there are countless ways in which people and bots try to provoke classic media, to irritate or provide false information.

I believe that critical and enlightened journalism was always difficult, because many parts of the world are not free. That has been the case for centuries if not millennia. However, it is of course true that there have been serious developments in societies that we did not necessarily expect. Including in our own. When our photographers can no longer go unprotected to every football pitch in eastern Germany because they might meet Pegida demonstrators who become violent. When we experience hostility or are barred from party conventions, such as happened with the Alternative for Germany for a period, then these are moments that force us to realize that freedom is under threat. Journalism is always one of the first victims of freedom. First it is impeded, then it is prevented, and then journalists are thrown in jail, like we have experienced in Turkey, or even murdered, as we’ve seen happen in Russia. We plead with our colleagues around the world to be extremely careful. Every news item is important, but no news is worth risking your life.

We are experiencing a return to the core function of journalism at the same time as a revolution through digitalization. That means that journalists’ original craft, researching and verifying, is more important today than ever. It was always been the core of the journalistic profession. However, it gains a whole new level of importance in this era of misinformation, disinformation and so-called fake news. On the other hand, as well as the traditional core of journalism, the profession is becoming increasingly technical. When it comes to researching, verifying, programing and publishing, there’s a very strong emphasis on digital tools. That's why we insist on enabling all of our dpa colleagues to handle these digital tools. For a start, we have a broad social media training. We also, however, require specialists. For example in the areas of radar and monitoring or verification. We deliberately train these experts and create these roles in the newsroom. What remains the same, regardless of all these changes, is the networked work: the agency journalist never works alone, but is always part of a team. And he or she never works for themselves but rather for all our customers.

The palette of agency services has expanded enormously. Our cooperation with the customers has become incredibly intensive. We exchange ideas with our customers from the earliest stages of a product. For example when we were planning the dpa-Agenda tools. New channels are also discussed at an early stage and tested with customers. For example the new Info Channel, which helps us to communicate with customers about the big breaking news events even before the first pictures or texts have even appeared. That helps customers to plan and to prepare. The cooperation regularly occurs at an even earlier stage, when we come together in customer labs to think about: what do our customers need? What new things do we want and are capable of developing? It is also important to follow up with customers and evaluate any mutual successes. Under the working title “Performing Content” we are looking together at how successful our online services actually are on our customers’ websites. How can we improve these services so that our customers’ users get more of this content and are more engaged – for example sharing, commenting on or buying content. We have, in this way, internalized the principle of a dpa sharing economy: Networking was already in our DNA as a founding principle. The news agency is a marketplace for the many.

As journalists we absolutely have to ask the questions that also preoccupy the public, many of whom have more or less stopped consuming news. One example: we have in our office, a colleague, the caretaker, who before an interview told us what questions he would put to a particular minister. His questions were far removed from the concept that we had prepared for that interview. This experience was an important signal to include completely different kinds of questions in the Profile Process, which we want to use to increase the value of our news to readers.

In order to really change our method of questioning we changed our editorial process, for example in our conferences. When discussing a certain topic, we also invite colleagues who work in a completely different department or discipline to ask questions. They ask questions that the particular department wouldn’t necessarily ask. To be honest, it is a difficult process. That’s because it means, in the end, a cultural transformation.

Networking is the core of the agency. Nevertheless, it’s always possible to expand the networks further. There are now 60 networks across different dpa departments and locations both in Germany and abroad. This includes the “Army Abroad” network, the “Brexit Team,” the “Diesel Team” and the “World Cup 2022” network. It is important to us that a topic is not valued and organized in a one-dimensional fashion by one location or department. We need a lot of different points of view. The stories that the networks produce go down very well with our customers: A story that starts in Athens but then is told via Rome, Paris, Brussels and Berlin has better chances – online and in print.

The exchange of ideas with our customers is becoming more intensive. We collect and structure the requests and suggestions that we get every day and they are then reflected in our current development projects, for example the Profile Process and the Info Channel project. This includes checking back: Have we understood the suggestion correctly? Is our material prepared so as to meet to the customers’ expectations? This is a continuing process that permanently shows us what we have to change.

Basically at dpa we follow the strategy of using constant social media training to ensure that all our colleagues have the very latest knowledge. That already starts with the trainee journalists. The media market, the readers and users, but also the journalists themselves, have greatly changed in recent years. The training of the next generation didn’t always keep the pace with this. We have now changed this with our new Volo Program for the trainee journalists. We are working on finding particular roles for our trainees. For example, multimedia journalists, who can create for any genre, or directors, as we call them, who direct and edit in a newsroom. Or newsroom developers, who can program, and product managers.

Happily we can always find young people who want to go abroad. That hasn’t changed much compared to before. People want to get to know exciting places, explain them and report on them. That can be in regions that are nearby, like Poland. Or the United States, where things are particularly interesting at the moment. Or war zones, like in the Middle East. Of course candidates have to undergo special training to prepare for these jobs in crisis regions. These kinds of postings require not just a particular interest, but also a certain courage and above all prudence.

You could describe our newsroom as a factory, a newsroom for individual services. Companies and organizations are the ones who rely on these services. Our customers can place an order with us for content that they need and we try to deliver it to them exactly so – always with a particular dpa know-how. Editors, layout experts and technicians work here hand in hand to implement these diverse customer wishes.

We have great customers like, for example, the German Foreign Office and Deutsche Welle, for whom we work on a variety of products. We deliver content to more than 300 embassies and consulates across the world, which they then put on their websites. The reports are written in German, English and Spanish and are published five days a week. The German Football Association is also one of our customers. We provide text and graphics for their children’s website, Paule. That is one of our team’s favorite projects.

Custom Content’s main business has often been short-term and project-related contracts. We are trying to get more long-term projects in order to strengthen the basis. And we are succeeding in doing so, for example with customers like the Association of German Banks or ING-DiBa. We are also constantly developing the networking of colleagues with other dpa editorial teams – consolidating the exchange and optimizing the workflow. The more diverse the dpa know-how that flows into our content the better the service becomes for our customer.