The Korean OhMyNews-website feautres 200 stories a day, 70 percent of those written by more than 41000 “citizen journalists”. Ordinary people who have signed themselves up for writing Essays on everyday life and Columns on political and social issues – along with book and film reviews and media critisism.
So explained Jean K. Min, International editor of Ohmynews.com in his just-ended presentation at the CustomerMade conference in Copenhagen today.
Instant fame is one of the parameteres that drive this creativity: Publishing on OhMyNews guarantees your stories are read – the present record are at 100.000 views. That – and the commenting of other users, along with the sense of being empowered through particpating. Yet another one is money: OhMyNews pays for the best stories – and users can donate money too writers they specifically like. And do so: one writer received $5000 on that account.
The basic “hard news”, analyses, columns and editorials are, however, written by employed staff reporters. And the stories of the Citizen Reporter-stories are also edited by professional editors, to ensure their quality.
About Jean K. Min and Ohmynews.com
The official conference presentation of Jean K. Min and Ohmynews.com reads: The online newspaper Ohmynews.com didn’t even exist five years ago. Now it’s one of the most influential news media in South Korea. Their slogan is ‘Every citizen is a reporter’, which should be taken literally: 80% of the site’s reportage is written by upwards of 40,000 ordinary citizen-reporters from all over the world. Jean K. Min, editor of the international edition of Ohmynews.com, will be describing how Ohmynews.com works and discuss what possibilities this new journalism opens up for the media and citizens themselves.
Live blogging from CustomerMade
This post is brought to you live blogging (well, this particular paragraph was actually written in advance just yesterday evening) from the The CustomerMade conference – one day of focus on usergenerated content, products and services: about how “the market itself is taking over all phases of production, from concept development and design to finished product” as the official website reads. Arranged by O’Reilly Media and Innovation Lab in corporation with Foreningen af Danske InternetMedier (my organisation) – the IAB Denmark, among others.
More posts from CustomerMade
Here’s my other posts written during the day from CustomerMade:
- Live blogging from CustomerMade (CustomerMade liveblogging #1)
- Conference webcasted (CustomerMade # 2)
- “Wellcome – and introduce yourself…” (CustomerMade liveblogging #3)
- Counterstrike: User-created versions of “Half-life” game kicks ass – popularity outnumbers official version by a factor 100+! (CustomerMade liveblogging #4)
- Lightning Talk: In for a robot-fight (CustomerMade liveblogging #5)
- Users give Mindstorms new Sensor (CustomerMade liveblogging #6)
- Breaking news: Lego only days aways from launching Mindstorms as open source (CustomerMade liveblogging # 7)
- Honey I’m on Ohmynews! (CustomerMade liveblogging # 8 )
- If American Airlines paid Steve Jobs to get ideas… (CustomerMade liveblogging # 9)