More On Ohmynews

from the a-little-late dept

You have to wonder if Dan Gillmor is a little annoyed that the Associated Press scooped him last week and got out their story on Ohmynews and its citizen reporters before he could complete his own version. Gillmor's article, though, has many more details about the Korean news organization, and even helps clear up some of the questions I had. After the first article ran, I was wondering how this was any different from the "freelance" writers that many American publications use. The difference, really, is one of scale and mindset. Ohmynews makes it easy for anyone to submit stories and get them accepted - and they expect the vast majority of their content to come from their "citizen reporters". Since there's no space constraints on a website, this makes sense. It's certainly the type of model that could work well in the US as well - especially for an established site that is trying to expand (with Salon being the most obvious example).
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  1. identicon
    dorpus, 19 May 2003 @ 3:12am

    Scalability?

    What would prevent such sites from not degenerating into worthless chatter about UFOs, healing crystals, who shot JFK, or whatever that a lot of people "know" are true? Grass-roots organizations of any sort are limited by the laws of averages; people who know better are crowded out.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    lor, 19 May 2003 @ 8:18am

    one question

    how much do they get paid ?

    yes, article says between zero and $16 depending on the rating editors give to the article, but imagine if only 1% fetch 16$, that's nice deal for the newspaper

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Max Vincent, 20 May 2003 @ 8:37am

    Prevent worthless chatter???

    Come on now, this news site is a Korean site. Nobody there gives a rat's tail about JFK, UFO's or healing crystals.

    Those subjects are mostly an American Phenomenon.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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