Stay in touch

Snail-mail is obviously not the best way to organise international debate in the era of the World Wide Web. It takes at least six weeks to get the magazine to places like Chittagong in Bangladesh. It is not unusual for the postal services to only deliver it after three months in Nairobi, Kenya. And, as many of you, dear subscribers, know, sometimes D+C/E+Z does not arrive at all.

When I took over as editor in chief at the turn of 2003/2004, I already said that our website had to improve. At the time, we merely posted all manuscripts once a month. Since then, we have gradually moved on to publishing several articles a week, and in the past few years we have been posting one new contribution every working day.

Since January this year, however, we have been posting at least one new contribution every day. We are able to do so because an additional journalist has been added to our editorial team. We are producing more content according to a more systematic schedule on our website www.dandc.eu. As regular visitors know, we offer a new Nowadays column every Monday, Opinion ­pieces every Wednesday, articles that assess matters or events In brief on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and In depth analyses on Fridays and Sundays. The website is attracting more visitors. Since January,  we have had about  two thirds more than we did in the same months last year.  

The money for expanding the website stems from reducing the print circulation. We imagine, however, that many of you will want to stick to the monthly format you are used to. Accordingly, we are publishing D+C/E+Z in the old format as an e-paper on our website. This digitised monthly edition is made available on the first working day of every month. You can access it online and benefit from various links, or you can download it as a pdf file and read it whenever you like offline. We know that this format suits tablet computers best and that this kind of device is more common in rich than in poor countries. To tell by recent experience, however, it will fast become more widely available in the developing world too.

Our print edition is not dead, however. It will appear in a new reincarnation in the second half of the year. It will include two focus sections. Its purpose will be more to document long-term debate.

As most of you will know, we are funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development with tax money and published on assignment by Engagement Global. Our paymasters see a need for an international forum for debate that involves civil society, academia and the private and public sectors. All too often, public discourse is still confined by the national borders that define media markets. Our mission, accordingly, is to make a difference, and we do bridge divides. I am proud to be editing one of the few publications in which readers do not know beforehand, whether the World Bank, for instance, will be bashed or praised in any given contribution.

We provide a space that transcends borders. The more people take part from all over the world, the more relevant this space will become. We’d like to invite you to stay in touch. If you want us to keep you briefed, please subscribe to our newsletter.

Hans Dembowski is editor in chief of D+C Development and Cooperation / E+Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit.
euz.editor@fs-medien.de