LATimes Provides OhMyNews Update
A Los Angeles Times story provides an update and a good overview of OhmyNews, South Korea’s citizen written online newspaper, here is a key part:
After making a big splash during South Korea’s 2002 presidential elections, the company lost money last year on revenue of about $6 million, most of it from ads. Its readership, as measured by page views on the Internet, has fallen to about 1.5 million a day, from a peak of 20 million five years ago.
Last summer OhmyNews expanded into Japan, with $11 million of financing from Tokyo-based investment giant Softbank Corp., but neither that site nor the English-language international site has come close to matching OhmyNews’ performance in South Korea.
“My personal feeling is the future is not bright,” says Yoon Young-chul, a journalism professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “Its impact has been decreased.”
