MEDIA DEVELOPMENT

Evaluation Report
Executive summary Bangladesh
Management and Leadership: Analyzing project partners’
capacities and collaboration with DW Akademie

dw-akademie.com

Background
Journalists and media organizations inBangladesh work in extremely difficult
circumstances and face significant challenges in reporting freely and maintaining
their economic viability. Even partner publications with high standards of journalism,
such as the Daily Star and Channel I group,
must practice self-censorship on sensitivestories. Survival is a constant struggle. At
the same time, university journalism graduates often lack the skills, including digitalskills, demanded by the media houses,
succinctly characterized as a “huge gap between the classroom and the newsroom”.
The sector’s low pay and status, and scarcity of jobs, motivates only a minority toseek employment there: few are likely tofind a future in mainstream media houses.
Nor are the university departments overtly positioned to become robust defendersof media freedoms. These are the realities
confronting the project.
The overall goal of the project is to prepare
young media professionals for a careerin journalism, with a special emphasis ondigitization. The key target groups are journalism students, university graduates, andjournalism career starters. The main project partners involved are the media andjournalism departments of Chittagong andRajshahi Universities, and the NGO Article
19, to build and host an eLearning platform.
Cooperating partners are media outlets,
the Daily Star, Radio Today and Channel I —a goal being to build links between themand the universities, including intern placements. New university partners are being
explored, including Comilla University,which was supported in organizing a networking conference in January 2020.
The project pursues three lines of action:
1. Building on a new curriculum introduced by the first project cycle, toenhance the quality of teaching andcontent of departments, introducing
practical and applied learning in a supported Media Lab, and modules in social media, mobile journalism and data
journalism;
2. To strengthen cooperation between departments and media houses, includinginternships, Career Advice Centres andguest lectures;
3. To strengthen journalism more widely,including leveraging existing partners
to spread good project practice to othercentres and creating a freely available
eLearning platform.

This evaluation covers the project’s second cycle of 2018 to 2020. It aims to gain
insights into the management and leadership of the partners and DW Akademie
team, and how they influence the projectand its outcomes, based on a new DW
Akademie methodology that refines theOECD/DAC criteria. The evaluation wascarried out between October 2019 andMarch 2020. The work included a methodology workshop shared with otherevaluations; extensive documentary analysis; production of an Inception Report; akick-off workshop with the DW Akademie
team in Bonn, followed by in-depth remoteinterviews; a six-day field visit between
February 29 and March 5 that included key
informal structured interviews and interactive group discussions, final remote verification interactions, and report writing.

Conclusions of the project evaluation
Overall Assessment:
The first cycle of this project set down strong
foundations, particularly with the new department curriculum, in enhancing teaching quality, and developing career centers.
Overall, the current cycle builds successfullyon that, enhancing specific digital skills, introducing media labs, launching the internship program, initiating networking activities, and building the eLearning platform.

The DW Akademie’s team and management
are highly respected and effective, and show
leadership in dealing with challenges, securing new partners and addressing emerging
possibilities. Areas of improvement might bein integrating partners more securely into
the strategic level of project ownership —though here the onus lies also with partners,
some of whom have not fully responded toefforts to bring them in. Partners engaging

in other ways with the media sector, such as
NGOs and media houses, existing and potential, are particularly valuable in this regard
because of their strategic sector positioning,
including in exploring new directions.
The partners have, overall, at least reasonably effective management and leadership processes in place, with cohesive
teams; better than the evaluator ­expected,

Below are overall conclusions regarding the evaluation criteria,
averaging all three partner scores:
DAC Criterion(average of allassessments)

Numericvalue,
averageAssessment

Explanation

Relevance

3.5

Overall fulfilled

Most findings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Effectiveness

4.0

Overall fulfilled

Most findings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Efficiency

3.7

Overall fulfilled

Most findings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Impact4.3

Comprehen­sively
fulfilled

All findings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Sustainability

4.0Overall fulfilled

Most findings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

especially in the universities. There are
weaknesses but none that prevent partner
teams from implementing activities. Progress with the university Media Labs varies
but a key conclusion is that the potential ofMedia Labs as a catalyst for change is huge,
including to gain the most from the new curriculum (introduced in the project’s first cycle and working its way through successiveyears) and in equipping students towards
future media sector production activities
and employment. Internal constraints at
the university level may be hampering theMedia Lab, but this is an opportunity for thepartner teams to show leadership and to
take responsibility in this area.

veloped and launched rapidly and is alreadyextending the project target groups, withthe potential for intensifying this relationship with new media actors in the new cycle.
The transition between departments chairs— one of two special topics examined — wassmoother than expected, though it is possible that strategic level ownership is lost in
the handover. The second special topic examined whether financial administration isa major challenge for partners: this proved
to be the case only for the one partner witha direct contract. Otherwise, no significant
problems were noted.

DW Akademie

is Deutsche Welle’s center forinternational media development,journalism training and knowledgetransfer. Our projects strengthen thehuman right to freedom of expression
and unhindered access to information.
DW Akademie empowers people
worldwide to make independent
decisions based on reliable facts andconstructive dialogue. DW Akademie isa strategic partner of the German
Federal Ministry for Economic
Coopera­tion and Development. We
also receive funding from the Federal
Foreign Office and the European Union
and are active in approximately 50
developing countries and emerging
economies.

CONTAC T

Dr. Laura Moore
Head Research and Evaluation
laura.moore@dw.com
Berlin, Germany
DWAkademie@dw_akademie
youtube.com/DWAkademie
dw-akademie.com

Media houses show ongoing willingness toengage with the project and its objectives,
but believe that bridging the gap between
them and departments must be a long-term
aspiration. The eLearning platform was de-The objective of the external evaluation is to provide a constructive assessment of the project results. It does not necessarily align with theperspective and planning of DW Akademie. Nevertheless, all findings were discussed in order to allow lessons learned to be incorporated into
the development of future strategies.