Moon Ihlwan (BusinessWeek's Seoul bureau chief) writes on BusinessWeek.com
"The Korean site for citizen reporting hasn't had much success so far with its moves into other markets—and it's in the red at home ..."
"Few doubt that OhmyNews, which galvanized younger voters, contributed to the election of President Roh Moo Hyun, who was portrayed by Korea's mainstream newspapers as a dangerous leftist with little chance of victory. OhmyNews readers, prompted by citizen journalists' reports that Roh was trailing in the vote, sent out a blitz of text messages urging friends to vote for Roh, and he prevailed by a narrow margin."Ordinary citizens found a medium to serve their interest and express themselves [...]"
" [...] OhmyNews has since become one of Korea's most influential media outlets. However, the site continues to look for a profitable business model and is expected to lose money in 2006. This comes after a several years of very modest profits. OhmyNews, set up in 2000, now has about 90 full-time staffers—65 of them journalists—and some 44,000 citizen contributors. Together, they produce around 150 articles a day. This year, it expects revenues of about $6 million, 60% of which come from online ads and the rest from the sale of the company's news product to Internet portals, and from miscellaneous services [...]"
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The frist comment on businessweek.com is from Jane Abao. She writes:
"True or not, the paper will go down in history as having done something great for the citizens: put up a president of their own choice. OhmyNews does not pay its reporters much who do their work out of passion for writing and for truth. On this score, I don't see how it could get into trouble financially. If it does, what's the beef? Oh has made it clear even from the beginning that not everything is money."
She is right and sure OhmyNews model is not and will not be the prefered business model for Main Stream Media like Business Week / McGraw-Hill, but it seems to serves its readers / readers community very well ... and it is not to late, that learn from that project!
With one of my client in Germany, we right now working on an extended model of social media and concept a site / platform for citizen journalism not only for readers and writers, but open for others to partizipate as long as they are bringing value to the community and pay their entry fee ... stay tuned on more!
via I want Media
(Cross posting on Hugo E. Martin on Media, Marketing & Internet)
