OhmyNews gets $11 million Japanese injection

Posted by John Burke on February 24, 2006 at 11:17 AM

Arguably the world's most long-standing and successful citizen journalism publication, South Korea's OhmyNews, has traded almost 13% of its shares for $11 million from Tokyo-based firm Softbank. The deal also marks the first step towards an OhmyNews International division and a Japanese version of the six-year-old site.

Representatives of start-up citizen journalism sites in the United States sounded off positively on the deal.

Anthony Lappé, executive editor of Guerrila News Network, an umbrella for 10,000 community blogs, said, “There’s a whole lot of interest in content sites, especially those that have a large number of contributors. It’s a very captive and specific targeted audience, which advertisers like a lot.”

But at the same time, Lappé noted the difference in the success of OhmyNews and American citizen journalism sites; "“Asian participatory anything is just way ahead, whether it’s Japan or Korea. The sense that I get (in the States) is it’s just so much more about MySpace and about hooking up.”

Source: Red Herring

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