Asia Times: OhMyNews Changing Media, Politics
A comprehensive Asia Times article about South Korea’s OhMyNews begins:
While South Korea’s journalists and political leaders have been debating how to reform Korean media for decades, the hot new OhmyNews website has paved the way for a new type of democratic journalism with its thousands of ‘Net citizens - netizens - as contributors. Readership is in the millions and netizens act when called upon.
The article adds:
South Korea’s youth culture is forcing the development of new participatory forms of online journalism and influencing innovative social/political configurations in media.
The emergence of citizen reporters is succeeding in breaking down the monopoly of information control and ownership by conservative economic media elites. Now mainstream news outlets are even adopting more interactive features in their online versions. There’s a long way to go, but all of this has led significantly to the democratization of South Korea’s new media, offering online voices from ordinary citizens ….
Korean media observers remain skeptical whether there can be a more democratic and new press order, but one thing is certain, the young South Koreans are on the ‘Net and not buying their daily newspaper to get the news.
And what about OhMyNews’ content? Article author James Borton writes:
A close reading of the site’s articles reveals that its young non-professional journalist contributors are anti-corporate, anti-government and often virulently anti-American. OhmyNews covers the topics found in the daily media, from sports and entertainment to politics, but always infused with a point of view.
The blogosphere gets part of the credit for its success:
The birth of blogs and participatory journalism explains the exponential growth at OhmyNews. The online traffic increase has enabled the company to become the website of “citizen journalism”, as it is known, and its full-time staff has increased to 53, including 38 full-time reporters and editors, who often exchange tasks; about 15 people are dedicated to editing. The number of paid “citizen reporters” writing for the website expanded from 700 in the beginning to more than 32,000 today.
