Week Five: OhmyNews

Quinn, S (2008) Chapter 7: ‘OhmyNews in South Korea’ in Asia’s Media Innovators, Konrad Adenaueur Foundation, Singapore.

There’s also an audio ‘video’ on Youtube about this- see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaVzMA8-pcI

This article begins by listing vital information about Korea’s population and a brief history on its media and internet usage and growth. These facts are then interlinked with the main point of the story- the citizen-journalist based website called OhmyNews (http://english.ohmynews.com/).

Quinn explains that the website was originally formed out of an idea that founder and CEO Oh Yeon-ho had, regarding news and its distribution around Korea. Oh believes that “every citizen is a reporter” and got frustrated ‘while trying to access major news sources’. It wasn’t until after finishing a postgraduate journalism degree in America that he decided to enlist the help of several businessmen and put his dream onto the main media stage. Originally starting with a staff of four and 727 citizen journalists in 2002, OhmyNews has grown immensely and now has over 60,000 citizen journalists in Korea alone (not to mention the thousands that come from other countries around the world). The site also attracts more than 700,000 repeat visitors each day, according to Quinn, and is proving to be a strong and influential competitor against over major Korean newsgroups, ranking as high as sixth on the Sisa Journal’s Most Influential Media Outlet list since 2003.

This just goes to show that the appeal of citizen journalism is on the rise, and this should serve as a warning to media outlets that if they don’t provide ways for their readers/viewers to interact, they may face even tougher challenges from competitors in the near future.