Results matching “korea ohmynews”

OhmyNews, the Korean online newspaper whose content is in majority edited by readers, is expected to start losing money in 2006, after 4 years of narrow profits.

Two years after the first issue of the international version, OhMyNews CEO Oh Yeon-Ho announced on Monday the launch of OhMyNews Japan. The three sites will cross translate their most significant contents.

In an effort to spread grassroots journalism, OhMyNews, the South Korean media outlet, is launching a Japanese edition, with corporate backing. The 6-year-old online news site will be backed be Softbank Corp. to help establish the Japanese branch.

As the phenomenon picks up speed, more and more citizen journalism projects, many with different themes, are popping up all over the Web. San Francisco Bay Area based iTalkNews is one of them. Launched in beta a few months ago, iTalkNews focuses on national news, combining user contributions with wired news from the Associated Press. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the site is that all articles are fact-checked before being posted on the main page, somewhat of a contradiction to other CJ sites that thrive on the rawness of their material. Elizabeth Lee, iTalkNews' co-founder and editor-in-chief explained some of the site's motives and goals through an email interview with the Editors Weblog:

1. When did you launch iTalkNews? What was your motivation for starting the site? Did you have any influences?

We launched iTalkNews in the spring of 2005. Since launching, many people have drawn comparisons between iTalkNews and OhMyNews, based in South Korea. While the seminal OhMyNews was definitely an inspiration for us, we set up iTalkNews not as a counterpart to OhMyNews, but as an independent collaborative journalism site based in the U.S.

What we see here in the United States, and what we’re trying to remedy, is that something is wrong in traditional journalism. In a world where information is becoming more interactive daily, in news there is still a disturbing linearity of information from top-down, with very little feedback from the people involved or being affected. For instance, in the aftermath of 9/11 and now during the Iraq War, many people are finding it difficult to find a reliable news source, or even commentary, because they suspect news sources to be politically aligned or biased, and so many stories have been either undercovered or omitted completely. People have begun to look to blogs for supplemental information, but blogs aren’t usually fact-checked and don’t have established systems of accountability.

We’re not looking to replace big media. However, what we want to provide is an alternative source of news for people to have their voices heard, and create a more reciprocal flow of information.

Cyberjournalist has posted a link to the OhmyNews International's first Citizen Reporters' Forum held in Seoul, South Korea from June 23 to 26. Highlights include Dr. Oh's introductory address, a Wikinews presentation and a whole lot of citizen journalism discussion. The site gives a good idea of what the conference was like with PDF downloads, speech summaries and comments.

Source: Cyberjournalist

Cyberjournalist has posted a link to the OhmyNews International's first Citizen Reporters' Forum held in Seoul, South Korea from June 23 to 26. Highlights include Dr. Oh's introductory address, a Wikinews presentation and a whole lot of citizen journalism discussion. The site gives a good idea of what the conference was like with PDF downloads, speech summaries and comments.

Source: Cyberjournalist

After the excellent sessions, I was lucky enough to land an invitation to to visit the newsroom of OhMyNews and hear from founder Yeon Ho Oh about his marvelous citizen media experiment.

Some quick scribbles on the laptop:

Mr. Oh defines OhMyNews as a "Massively distributed collaborative news operation on the web"

June 1 (Today!) he has updated his site to include participatory EDITING and RANKING as well.

New definition: Massively distributed collaborative editorial participation on the web

Think = OHMYNEWS + WikiNews . . . Hmmm - very smart guy.

So - readers today have a choice between a version of the reports edited by the professional-trained OH My editing staff OR a version of the site where stories are being ranked (by aggregate vote) by readers.

OH MY, indeed,

It is designed to be a 'playground for readers'

"Straight news is not the standard." Writing craft is not as important as the news value or opinions of the contributors. Most reports are essays, columns, opinions, facts, alerts, reviews and criticism.

And who are these rebel amateurs?

"Tech-savvy, youth, professional, educated, liberals fostering a social revolution largely because they are unhappy with conservative reporting by mainstream media." In Korea - the conservative media dominates.

And why Korea? Over 90 percent of citizens age 10-40 are internet users - a total of 33 million users.

Korea enjoys over 80 percent broadband integration.

Korea is an interconnected, small society.

Korean keyboard allows for real time typing - very simple - as fast as talking. so not difficult to transmit live text reports from the scene of breaking news.

Oh, and the good news is that they actually produce a weekly pulp edition of their best stories.

Posted by Robb Montgomery

After the excellent sessions, I was lucky enough to land an invitation to to visit the newsroom of OhMyNews and hear from founder Yeon Ho Oh about his marvelous citizen media experiment.

Some quick scribbles on the laptop:

Mr. Oh defines OhMyNews as a "Massively distributed collaborative news operation on the web"

June 1 (Today!) he has updated his site to include participatory EDITING and RANKING as well.

New definition: Massively distributed collaborative editorial participation on the web

Think = OHMYNEWS + WikiNews . . . Hmmm - very smart guy.

So - readers today have a choice between a version of the reports edited by the professional-trained OH My editing staff OR a version of the site where stories are being ranked (by aggregate vote) by readers.

OH MY, indeed,

It is designed to be a 'playground for readers'

"Straight news is not the standard." Writing craft is not as important as the news value or opinions of the contributors. Most reports are essays, columns, opinions, facts, alerts, reviews and criticism.

And who are these rebel amateurs?

"Tech-savvy, youth, professional, educated, liberals fostering a social revolution largely because they are unhappy with conservative reporting by mainstream media." In Korea - the conservative media dominates.

And why Korea? Over 90 percent of citizens age 10-40 are internet users - a total of 33 million users.

Korea enjoys over 80 percent broadband integration.

Korea is an interconnected, small society.

Korean keyboard allows for real time typing - very simple - as fast as talking. so not difficult to transmit live text reports from the scene of breaking news.

Oh, and the good news is that they actually produce a weekly pulp edition of their best stories.

Posted by Robb Montgomery

After the excellent sessions, I was lucky enough to land an invitation to to visit the newsroom of OhMyNews and hear from founder Yeon Ho Oh about his marvelous citizen media experiment.

Some quick scribbles on the laptop:

Mr. Oh defines OhMyNews as a "Massively distributed collaborative news operation on the web"

June 1 (Today!) he has updated his site to include participatory EDITING and RANKING as well.

New definition: Massively distributed collaborative editorial participation on the web

Think = OHMYNEWS + WikiNews . . . Hmmm - very smart guy.

So - readers today have a choice between a version of the reports edited by the professional-trained OH My editing staff OR a version of the site where stories are being ranked (by aggregate vote) by readers.

OH MY, indeed,

It is designed to be a 'playground for readers'

"Straight news is not the standard." Writing craft is not as important as the news value or opinions of the contributors. Most reports are essays, columns, opinions, facts, alerts, reviews and criticism.

And who are these rebel amateurs?

"Tech-savvy, youth, professional, educated, liberals fostering a social revolution largely because they are unhappy with conservative reporting by mainstream media." In Korea - the conservative media dominates.

And why Korea? Over 90 percent of citizens age 10-40 are internet users - a total of 33 million users.

Korea enjoys over 80 percent broadband integration.

Korea is an interconnected, small society.

Korean keyboard allows for real time typing - very simple - as fast as talking. so not difficult to transmit live text reports from the scene of breaking news.

Oh, and the good news is that they actually produce a weekly pulp edition of their best stories.

Posted by Robb Montgomery

After the excellent sessions, I was lucky enough to land an invitation to to visit the newsroom of OhMyNews and hear from founder Yeon Ho Oh about his marvelous citizen media experiment.

Some quick scribbles on the laptop:

Mr. Oh defines OhMyNews as a "Massively distributed collaborative news operation on the web"

June 1 (Today!) he has updated his site to include participatory EDITING and RANKING as well.

New definition: Massively distributed collaborative editorial participation on the web

Think = OHMYNEWS + WikiNews . . . Hmmm - very smart guy.

So - readers today have a choice between a version of the reports edited by the professional-trained OH My editing staff OR a version of the site where stories are being ranked (by aggregate vote) by readers.

OH MY, indeed,

It is designed to be a 'playground for readers'

"Straight news is not the standard." Writing craft is not as important as the news value or opinions of the contributors. Most reports are essays, columns, opinions, facts, alerts, reviews and criticism.

And who are these rebel amateurs?

"Tech-savvy, youth, professional, educated, liberals fostering a social revolution largely because they are unhappy with conservative reporting by mainstream media." In Korea - the conservative media dominates.

And why Korea? Over 90 percent of citizens age 10-40 are internet users - a total of 33 million users.

Korea enjoys over 80 percent broadband integration.

Korea is an interconnected, small society.

Korean keyboard allows for real time typing - very simple - as fast as talking. so not difficult to transmit live text reports from the scene of breaking news.

Oh, and the good news is that they actually produce a weekly pulp edition of their best stories.

Posted by Robb Montgomery

In an opening speech for WAN this morning, Dae-Whan Chang, Chairman of the Korean Association of Newspapers, laid out a refreshingly pragmatic vision of how newspapers must adapt to survive and flourish. Rather than insist print will triumph forever, Whan told the 1,400 attendees of the WAN/WEF conferences that newspapers are facing their own "Media Big-Bang" and must embrace and meet the challenges of convergence, changing audience behaviors, and shrinking ad revenues.
Whan identified Internet, broadband, wireless, digital TV as very real threats to newspapers' long-term dominance of their markets, but urged newspapers to restructure and adapt.
Whan told the audience that Korean newspapers had to face the very real challenge of online portals publishing numerous news stories and taking audience away from the newspaper sites, and described how the papers worked together to form the Korean Online News Association (KONA), which in turn created a news portal that would help them retain market share.
He outlined his approach to mobile news, explaining his belief that newspapers needed to adapt a hybrid platform--print, web and mobile--to be viable information businesses today. Intriguingly to this Westerner, Whan demonstrated how Korean papers used barcodes --embedded next to a print story--to offer readers the chance to scan the data with a cell phone or other device and received enhanced information (this was amazingly cool).
Emphasizing that the wisest strategy for newspapers is to embrace those mediums that make the best use of relevant technology, Whan explained how Korean papers are exploring--and building--customized news portals for the phone, mobile television news downloads, and mobile personalized news alerts.
Newspapers need to understand they have to COPE--"Create once, product everywhere"--and offer ubiquitious solutions for always-connected audiences (and is he right!).
"We need to move from being news and information providers to creativity facilitators," Whan concluded, stressing that the keys to success were to create a hybrid platform, build for an ubiquitious enviroment, and make content creative.
Susan sez: This speech broke me out of my ex New Yorker cynicism and sent me right to the keyboard--clearly, OhMyNews is not the only organization in Korea that's doing some hard thinking about how the news business needs to evolve. There are lessons to be learned here that the US--and other countries--can benefit from, and progressive thinking that's clearly linked to the highly networked behaviors of Korea's educated classes.

We have already written about the Korean news website Ohmynews a few times on the Editors' weblog, but until now we didn't know the precise figures concerning this website. "According to Min, director of international development, OhmyNews is generating almost US$500,000 a month in advertising revenue."We broke even last year and since then kept generating a monthly profit of about $27,000," The website is ranked in the top 15 in South Korea. According to a website message from the founder, Oh Yeon-ho, after three years OhmyNews was breaking even, with 2004 anticipated to yield a modest profit. According to OhmyNews sources, only 20% of the site's copy each day is written by staff journalists. The balance is totally dependent on outside contributors, including professors, police officers, students, housewives, business people - everyone. "OhmyNews citizen-reporters are paid from US$20 to as little as $5, depending on the place [each article] is assigned by our editors," Min said. The site was recently recognized at the fifth World Forum on E-Democracy hosted by PoliticsOnline, in a ceremony in France, as one of the global players instrumental in changing the world of the Internet and politics.

Source: Asia Times

I'm happy to see more and more articles - this week in Newsweek - on OhmyNews, the Korean online participatory newspaper. Three weeks ago, his CEO, Oh Yeon-Ho was our guest during the 11th World Editors Forum in Istanbul and he made a very strong speech about his vision of journalism. These days, the site is very interesting because of the reactions of Korean people about the threats against one Korean citizen in Iraq. I like too this sentence from Dr Oh: "Technology itself cannot change society.  Korean citizens were ready to participate.  Only prepared people, who can use the merits of technology, can make a difference."

Source: Newsweek through MSNBC.com. And OhmyNews website in English.