OhmyBigNews
By Neil Dodds
23 February, 2006
Also from Craig Newmark (this time his blog) comes the news that Korean citizen journalism site OhmyNews has just won $11 million extra investment funding. The cash, from new strategic partner Softbank, will be spent spreading "citizen participatory journalism on the global stage."
Around half the investment will go on plans to strengthen OhmyNews' South Korean operation. The company plans to invest in its English-language edition, but more excitingly, it plans to step up work on OhmyTV, an internet video journalism arm of the news operation.
Both steps are seen as crucial in OhmyNews' main plan: Building an international media empire. In March, OhmyNews International goes live. The company plans to build a "global platform of participation" and a "support structure for international citizen reporters." It admits that it will have to change its business plan and newsroom structure according to each new country it starts up in, but believes the basic concept that "every citizen is a reporter" can apply globally.
OhmyNews is one of the few participatory journalism sites to impact the media on a large scale and, according to an interview with president and founder Oh Yeon-Ho last year, it makes a small profit every month.
Hugely popular in South Korea, it boasts around 27,000 citizen reporters who file around 200 stories a day. Contributors are paid around a dollar for every story, but it is possible to "tip" the writers of popular articles. One contributor recently made a year's salaries in tips in one day!
The citizen reporters are backed with a team of 30 or so professionals, most of whom were former amateur contributors themselves.
In 2003, OhmyNews launched a print edition, aimed at raising awareness of the site and bringing the concept to Koreans without access to the internet. The 16-page newspaper, which includes the best of the week's stories, is distributed for free in Seoul and is also downloadable in PDF format from the website.
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