Tuesday, September 20, 2005

True Citizen Journalism

There's been a lot of talk about citizen journalism. Steve Rubel touts it. You also see it at Poynter. The Cyber Journalism site even has a list.

But, likely one of the oldest (if not the oldest) truely citizen journalist site around is OhMyNews.com. The SF Chronicle had a great piece on it in Sunday's (Sept. 18) edition.

Nothing but news from "citizen reporters" across South Korea, and even outside the country. Yes, South Korea. Not the the U.S.

According to the story, the site very much has an "us vs. them" attitude:
"'So here we hoist our flag and declare war on the old media system. ... We are overthrowing the basic principles of news reporting, which for many years has been taken for granted by many of the world's newspapers,' declares one of the company's brochures."

The site, which pays for submitted stories (about 2 in 3 are accepted) generates revenue from ads (70 percent), syndicated sales and premium contents.

Wonder when the first one will be nearly as successful here in the states?

-- Mike

Technorati tags: South Korea, Citizen Journalism, Journalism, Media

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