Oh My! The News Is Next: Users Crash Journalism's Gates

Recently I was contacted by a representative of South Korea-based OhMyNews.com, asking permission to post 10 Journalism Tips For Bloggers, etc. on that site (permission enthusiastically granted, and thanks for asking!). I had heard of OhMyNews but hadn't thought much about it. Looking it up, I find that it's at the forefront of a growing citizen journalism movement. From Business Week (May 15, '06):

Oh Yeon Ho knows the power of independent media. His Seoul-based Web site, OhmyNews, lets regular folks write about whatever they want. In 2002 that included big doses of news about presidential candidate Roh Moo Hyun -- at a time when Korea's leading papers brushed aside the dark horse as a dangerous leftist. On Election Day, as the citizen journalists of OhmyNews reported that Roh appeared to be trailing, young readers dispatched a flurry of text messages urging friends to go to the polls, helping Roh squeak to victory. "Citizen reporters beat traditional media," recalls Oh.

Little wonder that OhmyNews has become one of Korea's most influential media outlets -- and has inspired dozens of imitators around the globe. The site boasts 95 full-time staffers and nearly 42,000 citizen contributors, who together produce about 160 articles a day.

OhMyNews recently received a $13 million invesment from Softbank, and plans to expand around the world.

Among other sites working this field, Backfence.com looks interesting. It bills itself as "Your town, your views, your neighbors, all in one place." So far it covers suburbs near Washington, DC plus the San Francisco Bay Area, with well known technology writer Dan Gillmor a new contributor. Gillmor has been involved in a similar venture called Bayosphere, which is folding into Backfence, about which he says this:

The company focuses specifically on "hyperlocal" sites, forging new media and models to better serve communities and neighborhoods in ways we couldn't do before the Internet came along.

One big possibility that I see: covering the news that small local papers often don't want to cover because it might offend big advertisers or other local power brokers. Investigative journalism is expensive, in more ways than one, and that's why it's rare. (Although I hope any newbie investigative journalists will be careful and take some time to learn before leaping. A good place to start is Investigative Reporters And Editors.)

One thing that it looks to me like OhMyNews is getting very right: They employ fact-checkers, an example of carrying over what's worth preserving from the old model. Freedom doesn't have to mean freedom from standards, or from respect for your audience.

This could be transformative. What's been happening in the music industry is an obvious comparison, but closer to the subject, consider politics. See Crashing The Gate, by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga--Kos of DailyKos.com --and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com for how netroots amateurs are transforming the US Democratic Party, wresting at least some of the power from entrenched consultants and other pro's.

Or you could say it all looks like hacking. The Web is enabling the prying-open of the source code for journalism, politics, music--all forms of communication.