Environmental media watchdog project “medien-doktor UMWELT”
The pressing global issues of the natural environment deserve our attention. We are involved in both environmental and water projects as well as related application areas of science and education.
In the period 2012 to 2016, we have supported the medien-doktor UMWELT initiative to develop an online platform for journalists. This platform was designed to establish some meaningful criteria and quality monitoring standards for environmental reporting and to improve the quality of such reporting over the medium term. By means of a ‘peer review’ system, a pool of experts made up of experienced science journalists will assess recent environmental articles produced by journalists for newspapers, magazines, online media, television and radio according to certain criteria. The summarised findings of these journalistic experts will then be available online as a representative sample of current German environmental journalism.
Our funding partner:
The project partner is the Journalism Institute of Dortmund Technical University
Science Journalism Department. The man responsible for this innovative, practical, scientific watchdog project ‘medien-doktor UMWELT’ is Online-Grimme Award nominee, (for a similar medical watchdog project), Professor Holger Wormer of the Science Journalism Department. This is one of a total of eight faculties within the prestigious Journalism Institute of Dortmund University – one of the most renowned journalistic training centres of any German university.
