Following is a Q&A with Jean K. Min, communications director of OhmyNews International, the trail-blazing citizen journalism publication in Seoul, South Korea. The exchange — with questions put to him by myself and Matthew Lee of the Center for Citizen Media — took place in January 2007. [Read more…] about OhmyNews: ‘Every citizen can be a reporter’
This article contains some broken links but we’ll keep them intact as a snapshot in time.
By J.D. Lasica
Online Journalism Review
Not long ago, online news sites discovered that users wanted to become part of the media conversation. Begrudgingly, many news sites added group blogs and other devices that cracked open the palace doors and allowed readers to become writers. Turns out the barbarians at the gates were adept at slinging words. Who knew?
Now we’re seeing the next stage take hold in the citizens’ media movement. People are beginning to contribute rich media — photos, video and audio — to news sites.
“If news organizations don’t embrace this, it will embrace them, and they’ll become less and less relevant,” says Michael Tippett, founder of NowPublic.com. “Citizen journalism is not the future, it’s the present.” [Read more…] about Citizens’ media gets richer
This in-depth look at online journalism appeared as the cover story of the November 1996 issue of The American Journalism Review. It was considered groundbreaking for its day.
Agreat many of the Internet’s 20-million-plus users consider Old Media’s practice of top-down, father-knows-best journalism to be clunky, obsolete and irrelevant to their lives. And, in an age when anyone with a computer and modem can be a virtual reporter, they’re right.
So does this mean that professional journalists — the middlemen in the news equation — are expendable in a wired world? Hardly. Many Net users want reporters, editors and news directors to bring their fact-checking skills and other timeless journalistic values — trustworthiness, accountability, balance, fairness — to this bright new medium.
But they also want Old Media to jettison the tired, stale baggage of traditional news culture. They want fewer, better filters and less spin on the news. They want journalism professionals to grasp what’s essential to their lives — something that seems to be missing from their daily newspapers and on the TV news. [Read more…] about Net gain
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