Oh my – is that the news?
Image of Oh Yeon-oh, founder of Ohmynews.com. (Image taken from ohmynews ‘About us’ http://english.ohmynews.com/english/eng_section.asp?article_class=8)
When the media is government controlled and you cannot get the real news out or even read about it, what do you do?
According to Oh Yeon-oh, from ohmynews.com, give the people the means to create and read about the news that is happening.
The need was there for independent and reliable news in Korea, so Oh Yeon-oh founded ohmynews.com in February 2002.
Today it even has an international link http://english.ohmynews.com/
Since the launch of the site, its daily visits attract more than 700,000 hits.
At some stages, this has reached 20 million visits in one day, depending on the stories being covered.
Ohmynews encourages the use of citizen journalism and was one of the first websites to promote it.
Citizen journalism is an added benefit for the webpage, readers and writers alike.
The webpage gets access to a variety of stories and reviews to use on the webpage.
The readers get to read about stories that may have been censored by other media formats.
Writers get the exposure that they normally would not if they were simply blogging their stories on a webpage.
They also have the opportunity to be paid for their stories by the webpage and from reader’s tips.
It’s a win-win situation. Citizen journalism works and is here to stay.
