New publication: Content analysis

Many media development organizations try to improve the content produced by journalists. They do this, for example, using newsroom consultancy, training, mentoring and other approaches. But it is difficult to judge whether the quality of the products put together by the journalists in question truly has improved through intervention. In this paper we describe how quality in reporting could be measured through content analysis. We show that this approach, although somewhat technical, is feasible. It can help projects to become better and more successful. As a suggestion for practitioners in media development we present three options for measuring quality of reporting for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

DW Akademie
Briefing Paper 10/2014
"Content Analysis: Measuring the Success of Journalism Capacity Building"
Christoph Spurk, Institute for Applied Media Studies, Zurich
Jan Lublinski, Project manager Reserach and development, DW Akademie