Winter 2007 Citizen and Netizen Journalism Volume 15 No. 1

Editorial:

“Will This Kill That?”

“The archdeacon contemplated the gigantic

cathedral for a time in ‘silence, then he sighed and

stretched out his right hand towards the ‘printed

book lying open on his table and his left hand to-

wards Notre-Dame, and he looked sadly from the

book to the church: ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘this will kill

that’...the book of stone, so solid and durable,

would give way to the book of ‘paper, which was

more solid and durable still.”

The French novelist, Victor Hugo, in his Notre

Dame de Paris was commenting on the emergence

over 500 years ago of the printed book and its

Table of Contents

Editorial: ‘“Will This Kill That?”.. . . . . . . . Page 1

Welcome to Korea and OhmyNews . . . . . . . Page 2

Media War in Denmark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3

Citizen Journalists and the New ‘News’.. . . Page 6

Cit-J and Its Place in Journalism . . . . . . . . . Page 8

Reporting From Nepal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 11

Citizen Journalism Brought to Germany . . Page 12

Citizen Reporting in Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 13

Netizens in Japan Take Step Forward . . . . Page 14

Exporting Citizen Journalism . . . . . . . . . . Page 16

Netizens Critical to Citizen Journalism . . . Page 17

Cit J Not About ‘Amateurs’ or ‘Pros’ . . . . Page 18

Where Do You Head, Cit J?. . . . . . . . . . . . Page 22

OMN Changed My Perspective. . . . . . . . . Page 23

Researching the ‘My’ in OhmyNews.. . . . . Page 25

Cit J: Holding Power to Account .. . . . . . . Page 25

Time to Think. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 27

Great Expectations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 28

On Being a Citizen Journalist . . . . . . . . . . Page 29

Citizen Journalism in Indonesia. . . . . . . . . Page 30

challenge to the cathedral and the church as the

conveyor of authoritative ideas.

Today a similar scenario is being envisioned,

debated and tested in practice. “Will,” as Michael

Hauben put it, “the new online forms of discourse

dethrone the professional news media?”

(http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x13)

We offer this issue of the Amateur Computerist

to share some of this emerging debate and story

with our readers. Throughout the main stream news

media industry, the impact of the internet is being

taken seriously. Every major and most minor news-

papers, and every major radio and TV news pro-

gram has a website and many are considering or

experimenting with how to introduce increased

reader input and citizen reporting. These efforts are

commercially driven. The readership of main

stream media is declining and the web is increas-

ingly becoming the main source of advertising rev-

enue for newspaper companies.

But also there is a challenge to the authority

and centrality of main stream media. That

challenge is coming from efforts at non-commer-

cial or at least non-profit ‘and other forms of citi-

zen journalism where staff and citizen reporters

contribute as part of their roles as citizens of their

societies or citizens of the net, netizens, ‘Here lies

the controversy.

Samuel Freedman, a New York Times journal-

ist and professor at the Columbia University School

of Journalism sees citizen journalism as “one of the

trendiest terms of the moment…part of a larger at-

tempt to degrade, even disenfranchise journalism as

practiced by trained professionals.” Who would he

asks “treat an amateur as equally credible as a

professional?.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/

2006/03/30/publiceye/entry1458655.shtml. See

also “Citizen Journalists and the New ‘News,’”

page 6 in this issue)

Page 1

His fellow Columbia Journalism School pro-

fessor Nicholas Lemann voices his agreement in

the New Yorker (“Amateur Hour: Journalism with-

out Journalists,” Aug 8, 2006). Lemann argues that,

“the content of most citizen journalism will be fa-

miliar to anyone who has ever read a church or

community newsletter.” (http://www.newyorker

.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1. ‘See

also “Cit-J and Its Place in Journalism,” page 8 in

this issue)

Defenders of participatory or citizen journal-

ism do not agree that citizen reporters or journalists

are amateurs, only reporting community or

personal news. They point out that online newspa-

pers like Ohmynews in South Korea attract serious

citizen reporting and try to serve as society’s demo-

cratic watchdog, a role which main stream media

has more and more abandoned.

Oh Yeon-ho founded Ohmynews in Feb 2000

to encourage “every citizen to be a reporter” and to

make available in Korea a spectrum of news and

views not contained in the conservative main

stream media. From the very beginning Ohmynews

Korean language edition mixed staff journalist and

citizen reports and gave all articles professional

editing. According to Oh, “only those citizen re-

porters who are passionately committed to social

change and reporting make our project possible.”

(See, “Welcome to Korea and Ohmynews,” the bot-

tom of the next column.)

Similarly, Erik Larson who started the citizen

website flix.dk in Denmark in 2003 sees journalism

fulfilling a higher purpose needed by society than

main stream media is currently serving. He writes

that, “without critical high quality commercially

independent journalism, society loses its headlights

and moves into the future like passengers on a bus

riding at night at high speed with its lights turned

off.” (See, “Media War in Denmark,” page 3 in this

issue)

Larson writes he has deep respect for journal-

ism as a profession, but he agrees with John

McManus who wrote the book, Market-Driven

Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware. Larson writes,

“‘market driven’ journalism slowly but steadily

undermines the work conditions for journalists who

seriously want to pursue the task of being ‘democ-

racy’s watchdogs.’” Larson has adopted Oh’s com-

bination of professional editing and citizen report-

ing giving every citizen a chance to get her or his

voice heard and a chance to influence the daily

news agenda.

There is a sense that a new journalism is

needed because the main stream media has failed.

Ronda Hauben, a featured writer in Ohmynews and

researcher of the social impact of the internet, sees

Ohmynews as part of a vision of a 21

century press

that broadens what is considered news and who is

encouraged to produce it.

“Interesting times we live in,” writes Larson,

“a media revolution is unfolding right before our

eyes.” Twenty-first century media will be different.

but who is going to hold the power in the end?

Which will be dominant, market driven journalism

or citizen journalism?

[Editor’s Note: Mr. Oh Yeon-ho founded the online

Korean-language newspaper Ohmynews in

February 2000. Today, Ohmynews is a major player

in the South Korean news media industry, ranking

among the top 10 most influential newspapers

there. Ohmynews pioneered centering a newspaper

on articles submitted by what it calls citizen report-

ers mixed with some articles by staff journalists. In

2004, Ohmynews launched an English-language

edition called Ohmynews International (OMNI)

(http://english.ohmynews.com/) which has attracted

more than 1200 registered citizen journalist from at

least 91 countries. Articles in OMNI often show up

in online searches made with engines like Google

news. From July 14 to 17, 2006 OMNI held its sec-

ond annual Citizen Reporters Forum. The follow-

ing are Mr. Oh’s remarks opening that Forum.]

Welcome to Korea and

OhmyNews

OhmyNews founder and CEO

Oh Yeon-ho welcomes participants of

the 2

Int’l Citizen Reporters’ Forum

by Oh Yeon-ho

Two of the most prominent buzzwords in re-

cent years have been Web 2.0 and UCC (user-cre-

ated content). Underlying both concepts is the be-

lief that collective participation will lead to an opti-

mum solution or conclusion. In other words, deci-

Page 2

sions will best be made when there is truly mass

participation through the Internet.

While giant corporations rush to find a way of

commercializing these concepts, citizen journalism,

I believe, represents the most developed model for

Web 2.0 and UCC. It depends not only on the par-

ticipation of the masses but on the participation of

those who think critically and creatively.

Writing a news story requires a good deal of

time and consideration. It is much more difficult,

for example, than leaving a comment or posting a

blog entry. Though we are an open platform acces-

sible to everyone, not everyone can write a news

story. Only those citizen reporters who are passion-

ately committed to social change and reporting

make our project possible. The main reason that

citizen journalism has not grown and spread more

rapidly is the difficult task of finding and organiz-

ing these passionate citizen reporters in waiting.

Once citizen journalism takes root in society,

however, it cannot be easily uprooted. For it exists

at that point not only on a physical plane but as a

definitive concept in the minds of the people. I

hope Ohmynews stands as living proof and example

of how solid citizen journalism can be.

The speakers for our second International Citi-

zen Reporters’ Forum are admired around the globe

for working to make citizens the primary content-

creators, agenda-builders and, ultimately, decision-

makers in the world. We are honored and

privileged to invite them.

Citizen reporters from over 20 countries are

attending this forum. Some of them will spend 35

hours in flight just to come here. They represent

those who are realizing the possibility of global

citizen journalism. Their presentations will provide

a rare chance to understand the state of journalism

in general and of the budding citizen journalism in

their respective countries in particular.

Since the first forum held last year Ohmynews

International has more than doubled the number of

registered citizen reporters. The number of coun-

tries that our citizen reporters represent has

increased from 50 to 91, an indication that the

global spread of citizen journalism is not in some

remote future but is taking place right now.

Throughout this forum, we will focus humbly

on the limits and problems of citizen journalism as

well as best practices. Our agenda and sessions are

designed to introduce and provoke substantive dis-

cussion. I know of no other international forum that

is dedicated entirely to the unique topic of citizen

journalism. I hope this forum will be evaluated in

the future as a springboard for citizen journalism to

advance to the next stage.

I’d like to remind our readers that you will be

able to join the forum by accessing our site,

english.ohmynews.com. We are planning to web-

cast the forum live for the full length of the event.

Information and values still flow today from

top to bottom, from West to East, from North to

South. It is time now to push back and re-channel

the great flow back and forth, to and fro, from citi-

zen to global citizen.

Thank you.

[Editor’s Note: In 2003, Erik Larsen and two fel-

low Danish journalists started a citizen journalism

website. For no special reason they called it Flix

(www.flix.dk). Three years later Flix has gained a

reputation in Denmark as a substantial alternative

source of news and opinion. Larsen is its main edi-

tor. The following is his description of a contest in

Denmark today over the future of Danish media

and journalism.]

Media War in Denmark:

Which Way Forward?

by Erik Larsen

[email protected]

In late August 2006, I was a speaker at a one

day conference called ‘The Day of Journalism’ at

the Danish School of Journalism in Copenhagen.

This year’s focuses were on the invasion of free

newspapers into the Danish media market, the in-

creased amount of political ‘spin’ planted in news

stories and finally User Generated Content (UGC)

and Citizen Journalism (CR).

Citizen Journalism is set to move into the main

media-sphere in Denmark this autumn as two

printed newspapers (the big daily ‘Politiken’ and

the new yet-to-debut free national paper

‘Nyhedsavisen’ – which translated into English

literally means ‘The Newspaper’) have announced

that they will introduce Citizen Journalism on their

Page 3

web-editions. Both corporations – the Danish be-

hind Politiken and the Icelandic behind

Nyhedsavisen – have hired highly qualified and

talented people to run the Citizen Journalism sec-

tions on their respective websites. And they are

allocating huge sums and more and more staff to

their web-editions since the naked fact is that the

web is increasingly becoming the main source of

advertising revenue for newspapers.

My speech was divided into three parts: First I

tried to give some definitions of what Citizen Re-

porting (as opposed to Public Journalism and User

Generated Content) is and how we have been trying

to implant the Ohmynews concepts into Danish cul-

ture with the online news web site Flix

(http://www.flix.dk).

Secondly I gave some concrete examples of

fields where I believe Citizen Journalism is supe-

rior to traditional journalism, and finally I drew my

conclusion about whether or not the explosion of

citizen journalism we are apparently about to see in

Denmark will benefit society at large or generally

improve the standards of objective, critical journal-

ism. The latter is what I was asked to elaborate on

before the conference.

In Denmark all the big media corporations are

preparing for what is generally called ‘the Newspa-

per war’. All the three major Danish papers have

launched free give away papers within the last

weeks, they have spent enormous amounts of

money on this and the purpose has been to eat up

the market for free newspapers before the Icelandic

media venture ‘Nyhedsavisen’ enters the market.

‘Nyhedsavisen’ has bought up most of the journal-

istic muscle in Denmark, they have simply bought

out all the best journalists from the ‘old’ papers,

they have employed one of the most talented and

visionary editors in Denmark to head the battle and

they aim to become the biggest and most important

newspaper – and web-based news outlet – in Den-

mark within one year.

The Icelandic company has managed to com-

pletely overtake the newspaper market in Iceland in

a very short time with its free paper. No wonder the

old papers are scared.

This ‘media war’ is about one thing and

ONLY one thing: Engulfing as much of the adver-

tising market as possible. In short it is a splendid

example of what John McManus wrote about in his

book Market Driven Journalism.

McManus uses a simple but precise metaphor

for the importance of journalism in a democracy or

indeed any society where journalism is the ‘head-

light of society’.

Without critical, high quality, commercially

independent journalism, society loses its headlights

and moves into the future like passengers on a bus

riding on a highway at night at high speed with the

lights turned off. We will be blind to all dangers to

the democratic institutions, which are after all very

fragile and – historically seen – sparse phenomena.

We will be oblivious to potential environmen-

tal disasters, government corruption, all sorts of

illegal transactions made by multinational compa-

nies and a whole range of other issues of vital im-

portance to our common good.

I have a deep respect for journalism as a pro-

fession - with regards though only to the journalists

who understand that they are serving democracy

and/or the public in general (and those are rare) and

I believe it takes hard work and special skills and

talent to uncover, e.g., government scandals. Al-

though I am of course all for Citizen Reporting, I

do NOT want to see the tradition of quality journal-

ism disappear in Denmark. After all, with our long

tradition of having a free and critical press in Den-

mark, there are numerous examples of journalists

who uncovered scandals or illegal activities in Dan-

ish governments and in many cases even forced

officials to resign.

What John McManus documents so brilliantly

in his book is how ‘market driven journalism’

slowly but steadily undermines the work conditions

for journalists who seriously want to pursue the

task of being ‘democracy’s watchdogs’. He uses

the term ‘Cognitive dissonance’ for the psychologi-

cal phenomenon of journalists gradually twisting or

adjusting their moral codex. The pressure from edi-

tors above them forces them into dropping impor-

tant stories or adapting their writing so it fits the

demands of the those who in effect take over the

editorial control of any commercial media: The

advertisers.

When I hear newspaper people in Denmark

discuss the coming ‘Media war’ on, e.g., public

service radio (Denmark’s Radio) they talk about

newspapers and media as a business like any other

and the only purpose of running a newspaper today

is to make revenue for the stockholders or owners

by focusing on engulfing as much as possible of the

Page 4

billion kroner (DKK, Danish Crowns, our local

currency unit) advertising market. This way of

thinking, ‘media as purely business’, has become

accepted in Denmark though fortunately there are

many critical voices in the public debate from me-

dia researchers, teachers in the School of Journal-

ism, etc. All of these though are people who typi-

cally are not working inside the media.

Now, the editor-in-chief of the much awaited

new free paper in Denmark, Nyhedsavisen, has

proclaimed that he will assure that the highest qual-

ity of journalism will be safeguarded and featured

in his paper. It will be delivered to every single

household in Denmark for free and is expected

/feared to be the biggest newspaper in Denmark

very soon. He has said that huge resources have

been set aside for investigative journalism and I

believe he seriously believes in and strives for set-

ting a new and high standard for free newspapers.

He has also proclaimed that the new paper’s web-

edition will be the best and most read web-media in

Denmark, and it is to this end he intends to imple-

ment Citizen Reporting plus totally uncensored

blogging by the newspapers reporters on the

website.

If he can really pull that off I say Hallelujah. If

he manages to implement Citizen Reporting and

take it to a level that Flix.dk never managed to due

primarily due to lack of funding I will gladly shut

down the Flix server and spend my time on some-

thing else, like writing more articles myself or go

back to literature.

But - and this was the final conclusion in my

speech at the School of Journalism - we have yet to

see what Politiken and Nyhedsavisen mean and end

up with when they give Citizen Reporting the green

light. I believe there is a real danger that the stan-

dards of Citizen Reporting might be ruled by the

lowest denominator due to the pull of the market

forces; editors might be inclined to sieve out all the

intellectual stuff or any really important informa-

tive articles and instead highlight a kind of

smalltalkish ‘Reality News’. We have already seen

this happening with another free Danish newspa-

per, Urban, which offers blogging space to all its

readers. It occasionally features blog entries from

its readers in the printed edition, but always and

only dumb although entertaining lifestyle oriented

examples of ‘Citizen Reporting’, articles with

themes like ‘Why I hate smokers?’ or ‘How do I

find Mr. Right?’ and such stuff.

Will Politiken and Nyhedsavisen with all their

pretty ideals and promises be able to stand up

against the demands of their respective owners who

see media as a money making machine and nothing

else? Will they be able to make Citizen Reporting a

respected and powerful factor in the overall media

picture? Time will tell, and I can’t wait to see how

they implement it on their websites. If they are

smart they will make something like ‘Readers Edi-

tion’ on Netzeiting.de which I’ve studied more and

which seems to be a brilliant way of introducing

Citizen Reporting to western users/citizens.

What I liked about Mr. Oh Yeon Ho’s concept

behind Ohmynews when I first read about it back in

2003 was that he acknowledges the potential vir-

tues and skills of professional journalists while at

the same time stating that ‘every citizen is a

reporter’ and should have at least a chance to get

her or his voice heard or influence the daily news

agenda – which of course in South Korea in 2000

must have been an especially strongly felt need in

parts of the population due to the rigid and conser-

vative main stream media at the time.

Although it has never actually been unfolded

in practice, my vision for Flix.dk has been and still

is to combine the best traditions from ‘old’ media

with the immense possibilities of knowledge shar-

ing, personal storytelling and of course ‘Citizen Re-

porting’ in order to help cultivate the internet —

well the Danish section of it anyway — into the

supreme and unprecedented media for democracy

and free speech which it holds the potential to be.

But the Ohmynews model cannot be directly trans-

ferred to Danish citizens’ needs and culture. Some

heavy experimentation was/is needed with the pur-

pose of setting some basic rules, ethics and formats

for what could make Citizen Reporting a truly pow-

erful democracy tool in Denmark.

So — to answer the question I’ve asked myself

a few times after I learned about the coming boom

in Citizen Reporting in Denmark — will Flix.dk be

obsolete after the ‘big players’ take over the man-

agement of Citizen Reporting in Denmark? No, I

don’t think so. Flix may lose some of our best writ-

ers to the big media-sites but many others will dis-

cover Flix for the first time. My job as the Flix-edi-

tor will be to run any important stories which the

others won’t touch and make a special effort with

Page 5

regards to writing or running stories which en-

hances the general awareness of the effects and

dangers to democracy which will spin off of the

huge churn and turn in Danish media habits that we

are about to experience.

Besides, you could imagine that Citizen Re-

porters and their readers in a fully ‘Citizen Re-

porter driven’ media arena would not stick to or be

loyal to a single website but rather do their work

and information-gathering across a broad range of

sites, blogs and what have you. This is already the

case. No internet-user sticks to a single media but

jumps via hyperlinks from site to site. There are

certainly going to be plenty of challenges to both

journalists and Citizen Reporters in the future in

regards to distributing the important news and in-

formation out to the right people amidst the bom-

bardment of useless information, spam and

advertising-driven clutter which we try our best to

ignore when we sit in front of our screens but

which is still there and perpetually gets more and

more noisy and distracting.

The Danish newspapers have finally accepted

that the internet is NOT going to disappear over-

night as they must have been secretly wishing. Ev-

ery single Danish paper is moving staff from the

written edition to the web edition.

Interesting times we live in – a Media Revolu-

tion is unfolding right before our eyes and I guess

maybe one could ask the same question as was

asked before the French Revolution in 1789: Who

is going to hold the power at the end: The people or

the King? (The king in our current scenario mean-

ing the more or less corrupted and purely market

driven main stream media).

Citizen Journalists and the

New ‘News’

A response to Samuel Freedman’s

column on CBS TV’s ‘Public Eye’

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

“Each week we invite someone from outside...

to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News

and the media at large,” explains the introduction

on the CBS TV Web site feature “Public Eye.” The

March 29, 2006 article featured on Public Eye was

on the subject of citizen journalism. It was written

by Samuel Freedman, a professor at the Columbia

University School of Journalism and a New York

Times columnist.

In his article, Freedman presents

not only a superficial view of citizen journalism,

but also a rosy colored view of the mainstream pro-

fessional press in the U.S.

The thrust of Freedman’s argument is that citi-

zen journalism is “part of a larger attempt to de-

grade, even to disenfranchise journalism as prac-

ticed by trained professionals.” Citizen journalism,

according to Freedman, is in essence the presenta-

tion of “raw material generated by amateurs,” un-

like the journalism of the “trained, skilled journalist

(who) should know how to weigh, analyze,

describe and explain.”

Considering that Freedman is a professional

journalist and also a professor who is responsible

for the training of professional journalists, one

might expect that he would do some investigation

about the origins and thrust of the phenomena of

citizen journalism before writing an article which

not only mischaracterizes the phenomena, but simi-

larly mischaracterizes the practice of most of the

professional journalists in the U.S.

Citizen journalism is a growing phenomenon.

For many who care about producing or reading the

news, it is a welcome phenomenon. The South Ko-

rean newspaper OhmyNews has done much to in-

troduce and pioneer this form of journalism.

The

impetus for broadening not only the nature of what

is considered as news, but also who is encouraged

to produce the news, is part of the vision for a 21

century press that guided the creation and develop-

ment of OhmyNews.

Oh Yeon-ho, the founder and CEO of

OhmyNews started the young newspaper officially

in February, 2000. Oh was reacting to the “closed

and elitist journalistic culture” which marginalized

those journalists in South Korea who dared to chal-

lenge the imbalance of power in the media environ-

ment in South Korea at that time.

Oh’s goal was to contribute to a media culture

in South Korea in which the “quality” determined

what news would merit public attention, not the

“power and prestige of the media organization that

printed the article.”

OhmyNews has worked hard to pioneer the

concept that “every citizen in a reporter.” Explain-

Page 6

ing this concept, Oh describes how citizen reporters

for Ohmynews “raise high the flag of guerrilla war-

fare” against “the massive media power” that he

saw functioning in South Korea as “the final gutter

of Korean capitalist society.”

Oh believed that citizen reporters would func-

tion to provide a more accurate and all sided jour-

nalism as an alternative to the conservative South

Korean press that was dominating South Korean

media. “Citizen reporters can be called guerrillas,”

he writes, “because they are not professional and

regulars and they post news from perspectives

uniquely their own, not those of the conservative

establishment.”

In the U.S., there is a similar problem with me-

dia power which is used to increase the wealth and

power of a small sector of the society, while ignor-

ing the needs and desires of the broader strata of

the population. Take for example, the mainstream

U.S. media coverage of the current conflict

between General Motors and its parts operations

offshoot Delphi, and the union workforce. The

CBS TV program “60 Minutes” carried a segment

about the dire economic condition of GM and

Delphi on Sunday evening, April 4.

Similar to much of the other mainstream cor-

porate media coverage of the current controversy,

the producers of “60 Minutes” presented one side

as the whole story. From their presentation a

viewer would have no idea that there are workers

who are challenging the story that GM/Delphi and

the corporate mainstream U.S. media are present-

ing to the world of GM/Delphi’s dire financial con-

dition. The mainstream media is reporting that the

source of the problem is the wages and benefits of

the union workforce.

There is no coverage in the

U.S. press of the corporate transfer of funds out of

North America or corporate mismanagement or

deceptive bookkeeping.

On March 31, the Delphi Corporation asked

Judge Robert D. Drain, of the Southern District of

New York for permission to void the UAW con-

tracts as part of its bankruptcy process and to sell

or close 21 plants in the U.S., including those that

have been profitable like the Cooperstown Delphi

facility.

Auto workers who are challenging what is hap-

pening, refer to Delphi’s actions as “union busting

and corporate restructuring” not as bankruptcy. The

role of the media in helping to promote the corpo-

rate claims of economic impoverishment without

any independent media investigation or consider-

ation of alternative models of what is happening,

shows how there is a serious void in the role played

by the mainstream U.S. media in such a situation.

There is an important alternative perspective

that auto workers have been presenting as a way to

view the GM/Delphi restructuring attack on their

right to union membership and activity. Their arti-

cles and discussion are available on web sites and

mailing list maintained by union workers who ad-

vocate the need to fight the cutbacks in wages and

benefits and union rights that the GM and Delphi

actions represent.

These workers warn that as GM

and Delphi act to void the UAW union contracts,

other major employers are watching and

considering what they can learn from the process.

A similar one sided media presentation domi-

nated the public discussion during the New York

City Transit Workers Strike in December 2005.

There is a need for citizen journalists who will

fill the gap by telling the otherwise untold part of

the GM/Delphi saga. The mainstream press in the

U.S. will in general tell the “news” from the press

releases or interviews with advocates for corpora-

tions like GM or Delphi. Whether there are eco-

nomic or political reasons for this bias, be it the

need to maintain advertising contracts, or the need

to stay on good terms with the corporate

spokespeople, or some other reason, is secondary.

The main issue is that there is a need to present

the union workers’ side in the public debate over

the GM/Delphi restructuring, in order for the public

to have a chance to understand what is at stake.

Some of the workers advocating waging a struggle

against the GM/Delphi restructuring plan, say that

they spend considerable time speaking with report-

ers, only to see little or nothing of what they have

said in the article when it appears.

The Korean edition of Ohmynews, with the

articles by thousands of citizen journalists has been

part of a force to effectively counter the dominance

of the conservative press in South Korea.

Ohmynews has recently announced that it has en-

tered into an agreement with Softbank and which

will make it possible to create a Japanese version of

Ohmynews, will provide the funds for efforts to

improve the Korean Ohmynews, and will make it

possible to support the further development of the

International edition of Ohmynews.

Page 7

Journalism educators like Xiguang Li, the ex-

ecutive dean of the School of Journalism and Com-

munication of Tsinghua University, have expressed

interest in the Ohmynews model and in finding a

way to work toward having a version in their coun-

tries.

In the U.S., there is a need for a diversity of

viewpoints and an alternative to the pro-corporate

journalism that dominates the media landscape.

Ohmynews presents a working model based on citi-

zen journalists as a form of newspaper that can help

open up the U.S. media beyond its current

one-sidedness. It would be encouraging to see the

Columbia Journalism School and its professors

welcome such efforts and perhaps even provide

support to create a U.S. form of Ohmynews and

help train U.S. journalists about the innovations in

century journalism that online newspapers like

the Korean edition of Ohmynews have pioneered.

The current crisis in the mainstream media in

the U.S. demonstrates that there is a need for a seri-

ous examination of the deficiencies of the corporate

dominated media. By studying models like the Ko-

rean Ohmynews and trying to learn from its ability

to welcome netizens to be part of a more participa-

tory process for gathering and presenting the

“news,” a means may be found to create the needed

alternative forms of “news” for a 21

century press

in the U.S.

Notes:

1. “Outside Voices: Samuel Freedman on the Difference between the

Amateur and the Pro,” Public Eye, March 31, 2006. (http://www

.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/30/ publiceye/ entry1458655.shtml)

2. I am writing this article in the international edition of OhmyNews

which appears in English at http://english.ohmynews.com/ The Ko-

rean edition, however, pioneered the concept of citizen reporter or

citizen journalist).

3. “Ohmynews and 21

Century Journalism” (http://english

.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=24

6787&rel_no=1)

4. The term “guerrillas” refers to “small non-regular armed forces

who disrupt the rear positions of the enemy.”

5. CBS TV 60 Minutes (http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/

60minutes/main3415.shtml)

6. “Automakers and the Voice of the UAW” (http://english

.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=27

7878&rel_no=1)

7. “Coopersville Delphi Workers Surprised by Plant Closing”

(http://www.wzzm13.com/news/ news_article.aspx?storyid=52324)

8. See for example, “The Psychology And Brainwash” by John

Goschka, “Miller’s Deadline The Same Day As FBI/SEC Deadline”

by Gregg Shotwell, “Good Day Honorable Robert D. Drain” by Da-

vid Huff, and “A Buy-Off That Looks Like Rosemary’s Baby” by

Gregg Shotwell. ‘(http://futureoftheunion.com/?cat=15)

9. “First NYC Transit Strike in 25 Years” (http://english

. o h m y n e w s . c o m / a r t i c l e v i e w / a r t i c l e _ v i e w

.asp?menu=c10400&no=264876&rel_no=1)

10. “Ohmynews Bags Softbank Millions” (http://english .ohmynews

. c o m / a r t i c l e v i e w / a r t i c l e _ v i e w . a s p ? a r t i c l e

_class=8&no=282147&rel_no=1)

11. “The Emergence of the Netizens” (http://english

. o h m y n e w s . c o m / a r t i c l e v i e w / a r t i c l e _ v i e w . a s p ?

menu=c10400&no=234337&rel_no=1)

Cit-J and Its Place in

Journalism

A reply to Nicholas Lemann’s

New Yorker article

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

In his recent article, “Amateur Hour: Journalism

Without Journalists,” published in The New Yorker

on Aug 7, Nicholas Lemann challenges the promise

and practice of citizen journalism.

Lemann is on the staff of The New Yorker, a

magazine that publishes important investigative

journalism. He is also the Dean of the Columbia

University Journalism School, one of the most

prominent schools of journalism in the United

States. Given these credentials one might expect

that an article by Lemann in the The New Yorker

would offer a serious examination of the new phe-

nomenon of citizen journalism, and a consideration

of the role it can play in the media.

Unfortunately Lemann does not set out to do

either of these two pieces of much needed work.

Instead he offers an argument against citizen jour-

nalism very similar to the one advanced by Samuel

Freedman, also at the Columbia University Journal-

ism School, in an article published on CBS’s Public

Eye in March.

Page 8

At the root of Lemann’s article is the argument

that citizen journalism makes grandiose promises

but only delivers trivial fare.

“Professional journalists,” (or those who earn

their income doing journalism) according to

Lemann, are intimidated by the supporters of citi-

zen journalism and so do not adequately defend the

achievements of their profession.

It is these “professionals,” however, he writes,

who carry out the duties required of journalists.

Hence according to Lemann’s portrayal of the

world, all that is needed is an adequate defense of

the deeds of journalists who are paid for their work,

rather than trying to substitute “amateurs” who earn

their living elsewhere.

What Lemann writes is a defense of salaried

journalists. His case against citizen journalists is

that the articles they write are of the variety that

belong in a “church or a community newsletter,”

and therefore not an innovation.

The problem with Lemann’s presentation of

journalism in 21

century America, is that he is

substituting the protection of the profession of jour-

nalism, for the social purpose that is at the roots of

why journalism is so important for a society.

This point was sharply enunciated in a

program held in April 2006 at Columbia Univer-

sity.

One of the panelists, the journalist Charles

Glass, described the difficulties he has faced trying

to do journalism in the U.S. His complaint was that

American journalism has become hostage to a

“business culture.” He argued that for journalists in

the U.S., “Our moral obligation to tell the truth is

too often over-ridden by the commercial concerns

to do what the employer wants.”

Describing the destruction of journalism in the

U.S. by the business culture it is embedded in,

Glass said his experience had taught him that the

business culture couldn’t be adapted to promote the

truth. The business model is the wrong model for

journalism, he explained. This is because the goal

of journalism isn’t to reach consumers or custom-

ers. The goal of the journalist is to speak to

citizens.

Other panelists in the program at Columbia

were Seymour Hersh, John Pilger and Robert Fisk.

This set of prominent journalists explained that the

problem they observed in the U.S. political envi-

ronment was that there has been a breakdown of

many institutions and of the journalistic oversight

of these institutions.

Instead of the U.S. press providing oversight

and questions to the powerful in the U.S., too often

the press acts as official spokesperson or as the

disseminator of the government’s positions on is-

sues.

Lemann’s defense of journalism is actually the

defense of what Glass referred to as the “business

culture” which is destroying the ability of journal-

ism to serve a public purpose. The polity in the

U.S. is sick. The mechanism for rooting out the

sickness is to dig out and expose the problems of

the society that are hidden from public view. But

such exposures are rarely made, and when they are

submitted to editors, they may not be published.

Glass cited a number of stories he wrote that were

never printed or aired on television.

Similarly, Fisk described how the words used

by U.S. journalists mask the abuse of power. He

also demonstrated how very often news articles in

the U.S. press rely on government information as

their sources and hence end up presenting as news

the official version of the events, instead of uncov-

ering what is going on beneath the surface, what is

actually at stake, and for whom.

In the article I wrote in response to Freedman’s

article about citizen journalism, I described how

auto workers who are interviewed by the press

about the cutbacks and layoffs by the auto parts

company Delphi, do not see any reference to what

they told the reporters when the articles appear.

This is only one of a number of examples where the

point of the view of the powerful is presented to the

public as the only point of view in mainstream

journalism in the United States.

In the current media environment, there is little

investigative journalism being carried out by main-

stream media organizations, and few resources are

available for those journalists who work for the

mainstream press to delve beneath the surface of

current events to dig out the truth.

For example, there are various government

investigations ongoing into the bookkeeping prac-

tices of Delphi and its former parent company Gen-

eral Motors. Yet instead of investigating what is

actually going on with these corporate entities and

their management practices, many of the reporters

covering stories related to GM or Delphi just echo

corporate claims that the problem the companies

Page 9

are facing is that their workforce is too highly paid,

or that its pensions and health care insurance are

too heavy a burden for the U.S. auto industry.

There are any number of other events in the

U.S. that cry out for journalists to delve beneath the

surface. The outing of Valerie Plame’s identity as

an undercover CIA agent in July, 2003, in retalia-

tion for her husband’s activities in exposing false

claims made by the Bush administration, is but an-

other glaring example of a story that has not

received the attention it deserves from the U.S.

press.

The crimes of the Nixon White House were

unmasked because there were investigative journal-

ists who were able to devote time and resources to

digging out what was being hidden.

No such news-

paper investigation has been conducted in the cases

involving the Bush White House.

Lemann recognizes that Ohmynews is “perhaps

the biggest citizen-journalism site” and that it is

based in Seoul, Korea. He gives no indication,

however, of familiarity with the important achieve-

ments of Ohmynews. “What has citizen journalism

actually brought us?,” he asks disparagingly, ignor-

ing the fact that Ohmynews and citizen reporters

publishing in Ohmynews helped to elect an

unknown politician to the presidency of South Ko-

rea.

Nor does he seem to know that a citizen

reporter posting on Ohmynews to honor two middle

school girls killed by an armored tank driven by

two U.S. soldiers, helped to ignite large candlelight

demonstrations against the problem of the unequal

U.S.-Korean relationship.

There are other significant examples of

achievements by citizen reporters which Lemann

could learn about if he were interested. Then he

would be in a position to make an informed assess-

ment of the potential and achievements of citizen

journalism.

Instead, his case against citizen journalism

rests on three arbitrary examples of articles taken

from three different sites on a particular day in

June. The selection mechanism used to choose the

sample articles appears to be his effort to claim that

citizen journalism is equivalent to what would in

other times have appeared in a “church or commu-

nity newsletter.”

Lemann doesn’t provide the reader of his arti-

cle in The New Yorker with any means to under-

stand the origins of citizen journalism, as in the

context of the creation of the Korean edition of

Ohmynews, or the media reform movement called

the Anti-Chosun [Daily] Movement that it was part

of.

He does offer the reader a foray into the

vibrant publishing environment in Great Britain in

the late 17

century. The actual book he refers to,

Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stu-

art Britain by Mark Knights, provides a lively dis-

cussion of how representative politics was built on

extensive public participation.

While the book offers an interesting explora-

tion of the interconnection between political partic-

ipation and political representation, Lemann’s in-

terest in it seems more connected to the description

it provides of a period when partisan politics be-

came dominant. This seems related to Lemann’s

prediction that such an outcome is likely to be the

result among those writing on the Internet as well.

While Lemann’s article provides little perspec-

tive or insight into the citizen journalism phenom-

ena, it does provide an example of why citizen

journalism is needed. The Internet has brought

changes in our society, and institutions. Whether

the new forms and content available for journalism,

some of which are being explored under the rubric

of “citizen journalism,” will bring improvements to

journalism is yet to be determined. It is, at the least,

premature, for Lemann to pronounce the failure of

“citizen journalism,” especially when he has made

so little effort to learn about its nature and origin.

But more profoundly, his article, published in the

The New Yorker, and by someone of the stature of

Dean Lemann, demonstrates that there are serious

deficiencies in how change is considered and inves-

tigated.

Fortunately, the Internet and the advent of citi-

zen journalism means that other viewpoints and

examinations of the phenomena of citizen journal-

ism will be produced and discussed.

Notes:

1. Nicholas Lemann, “Journalism without journalists,” The New

Yorker, Aug 7, 2006 (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/

content/articles/060807fa_fact1)

2. “Outside Voices: Samuel Freedman On The Difference Between

The Amateur And The Pro,” CBS Public Eye, March 31, 2006

(http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/30/publiceye/entry145865

5.shtml

Page 10

3. Ronda Hauben, “Business Wrong Model for Journalism, Goal of

journalism should be to speak to citizens,” Ohmynews, April 17,

2006:

(http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c

10400&no=286231&rel_no=1)

4. Ronda Hauben, “Citizen Journalists and the New ‘News’, A re-

sponse to Samuel Freedman’s column on CBS TV’s ‘Public Eye’,”

Ohmynews, April 4, 2006 (http://english.ohmynews.com/article

view/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=283357&rel_no=1)

5. Ronda Hauben, “Citizen Journalism and Lessons from Watergate:

The role of investigative reporting in unraveling scandal,”

Ohmynews, June 20, 2006 (http://english.ohmynews.com/article

view/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=299884&rel_no=1)

6. “Newspapers And Reporters And.Citizen Journalists? Oh My!” -

Public Eye (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/06/01/publiceye/

entry1675510.shtml)

Reporting From Nepal

[Citizen reporters in their own words]

Rupesh Silwal discusses the

importance of citizen journalism

by Rupesh Silwal

Dear colleagues, Ohmynews team, inter-

national citizen reporters, ladies and gentlemen,

Greetings from South Asia — Nepal. Together we

experienced some wonderful moments at last

year’s Ohmynews forum. This year, too, participa-

tory journalism has brought us together. I’d like to

express my thanks to Ohmynews for all the splen-

did work, but today I would like to speak about its

influence in Nepal.

The Internet is playing a larger role in the daily

lives of many and racing towards being an integral

part of households the world over. Its impact is ris-

ing in developing nations like Nepal. Accordingly,

traditional journalism here is adapting to take

changing landscapes into account.

Citizen journalism has been practiced in Nepal

since mid 2005 — three months after the King

sacked the government and seized complete power.

Some 3,000 politicians, student leaders, journalists

and rights activists were arrested and press free-

doms were suspended to prevent any political mo-

bilization against the monarchy. Activists remained

in detention and were prohibited from traveling

either domestically or internationally, and the King

ruled directly without an elected government or

parliament.

In this context when the government curbed all

forms of media, Ohmynews became an excellent

platform for freedom of expression in Nepal.

After attending the First International Citizen

Reporters’ Forum in Seoul last year, I felt that I

understood more about emerging forms of 21st-

century media and citizen journalism. I shared my

experiences with a few enthusiastic friends and

they are now active citizen reporters for

Ohmynews.

After the royal coup, Ohmynews brought real-

istic versions of Nepalese society to an

international arena. At the time this was extremely

important because most traditional media outlets

seemed to be biased. The citizen reporters writing

for OhmyNews helped the world understand why

there was a movement against monarchism.

Stories on OhmyNews have a heart because

they prioritize human feelings. This is simply the

way that citizens write the news.

I wrote, my friends wrote and the whole world

knew what citizens were thinking about when other

media were just passing on rumor.

In this way, OhmyNews played a role in the

establishment of democracy in Nepal. Now, there

are more than a dozen citizen reporters from Nepal.

Their participation has changed their behavior and

made them think about the world in different ways.

Rosha, a citizen reporter from Nepal, now

takes a camera with her wherever she goes because

she doesn’t want to miss the chance to grab some

news for Ohmynews.

Pawan Acharya is a key person in Nepalese

news broadcasting and he has introduced some of

his friends to citizen journalism.

Some enthusiastic citizen reporters have even

started Nepal’s first citizen journalism site and the

government is working to regulate online journal-

ism as an important aspect of the internationaliza-

tion of cultural and social issues.

I appreciate OhmyNews because it carried a

series of articles on the caste-based discrimination

that prevails in this region. We have to face it ev-

eryday and the whole world should know that. It’s

a subject that is hardly ever covered in traditional

or international media.

Page 11

Thanks to OhmyNews I have regained contact

with old school friends and I now have more op-

tions in life. Reporting for international media

might have once been a mere dream for emerging

journalists but with OhmyNews it is just few min-

utes’ registration process away, and accessible to

anyone. This has broadened the horizon of journal-

ism.

However, there are still some issues to be

faced.

In the case of Nepal, most interesting news

stories are based on country areas where access to

the Internet is almost impossible. Who writes about

them? An urban reporter. I wish things could be

different, and one day I’m sure they will be.

There is also the question of literacy and

knowledge of citizen journalism among people in

Nepal’s remotest regions. However, once everyone

in every region learns about participatory journal-

ism, I promise that websites like OhmyNews will be

seen as the best source for news. Readers will trust

news stories written by the people they know!

During visits in the different regions of Nepal,

I have found brilliant citizens who are keen on

writing the news and are also seeking jobs.

At present the traditional media excludes them

in favor of hired or paid reporters who may or may

not write about the issues that most concern citi-

zens.

The South Asian economy is emerging as a

global force. Historically, culturally and geographi-

cally diverse, it is a region with thousands of untold

realities.

Politically and socially, the region is unique.

You can see communism declining throughout the

world but it is emerging here.

All the countries in South Asia are developing

nations, which means that the region is in a transi-

tional situation. This might be the reason why cor-

ruption has major impact on day to day life here.

The fact that the region is in the process of de-

velopment means that there are also a lot of oppor-

tunities here. I am sure citizen journalism will be

flourishing in South Asia within the next few years.

Everyone expects that OhmyNews will come up

with a regional site for South Asia.

I will conclude by saying that people power is

citizen power, and that obviously, citizen power is

guided by citizen journalism.

Here’s to the success of the Second Ohmy-

News International Citizen Reporters’ Forum!

Citizen Journalism Brought

to Germany

Reader’s Edition: New web site

modeled on OhmyNews

by Ronda Hauben

Reader’s Edition, created in the spring of

2006, is an example of a developing citizen jour-

nalism platform that is currently part of the German

language online newspaper Netzeitung. The content

of Netzeitung and Reader’s Edition, are different

though they have links readers can follow from one

to the other. While a regular staff creates

Netzeitung, the readers of Reader’s Edition as vol-

unteers determine the subject matter and content by

the articles they submit. Thus the content of

Reader’s Edition reflects the readers’ interests and

the issues they deem important to cover.

Peter Schink, who was the Netzeitung project

manager in charge of the creation of Reader’s Edi-

tion, started the project in March 2006. He explains

that he built the model for his project following the

idea of Ohmynews. Since the German media land-

scape is different from that in South Korea, how-

ever, Schink adapted the model so it would be “a

little bit different.” Also, since there was little

money for the project, he had to rely on modifica-

tions of the free software program WordPress to do

the technical development.

Schink explains that, working along with one

programmer and one designer, he created the Ger-

man language citizen journalism site after only

2-1/2 months of work. His goal was “to design a

platform which looks a bit like a printed newspa-

per.” It was important, he emphasizes, that “every

participant get the idea that it is not a forum or

weblog but ‘a newspaper’.”

While Reader’s Edition was in development,

Schink traveled around Germany giving lectures at

universities and at the “webmondays” being held in

various cities in Germany. Webmondays are infor-

Page 12

mal gatherings to bring together those interested in

developing web 2.0 applications.

In his travels, Schink says that he met many

“open-minded students, who really supported the

idea of citizen journalism.” From the interested

people he met, he found 10 volunteers who were

willing to serve as editors for the new online news-

paper. Called moderators, these volunteers are the

interface between the articles submitted by readers

and the process by which these articles are chosen,

prepared, and placed on the Reader’s Edition web

page.

Before the official opening of the Reader’s

Edition site, Schink collected email addresses of

interested people whom he encouraged to explore

the site. “Some of them were bloggers,” Schink

writes, “and as you can imagine, they really liked

to play around with the site.”

Though the majority of the editorial work and

articles are contributed by volunteers to Reader’s

Edition, the parent newspaper, Netzeitung, has been

providing technical and other forms of support. Re-

cently, however, the editor-in-chief of Netzeitung,

Michael Maier, has informed those participating in

Reader’s Edition that they will have to become

self-supporting. Maier has hired a business consul-

tant, Hugo Martin, to take Reader’s Edition into

what is being called Phase 2. Martin is proposing

that Reader’s Edition become a community plat-

form for NGO’s and others who want to have ac-

cess to publishing tools and are willing to pay a fee

for this access.

There have been concerns raised in the

Reader’s Edition online forum about the changes

being proposed and that such changes are being

carried out just a few months after the online intro-

duction of the citizen journalism project. One

reader proposed that a two or three year period of

time is needed to see how such a project will de-

velop, rather than making substantial changes after

only six months in operation.

Netzeitung, the parent newspaper, however, is

undergoing changes in its ownership structure.

Started in 2000 by a Norwegian online newspaper

company, Nettsvision.com, Netzeitung has already

seen a number of changes in its ownership struc-

ture. Recently, the current owner, Orkla Media,

sold the rest of its media empire to a British media

corporation, the Mecom Group, headed by British

media figure David Montgomery. Only Netzeitung

and Reader’s Edition remain with Orkla Media.

Hence Netzeitung staff members expect that

changes in the ownership and financing structure of

Netzeitung are likely to follow. Despite the upcom-

ing changes, however, Reader’s Edition has already

proven to its readers the promising potential of citi-

zen journalism.

One early participant, Rolf Ehlers, describes

the varied and interesting content contributed to

Reader’s Edition by its readers. He writes,

“Reader’s Edition is opening a new world of citizen

participation in all political and societal questions.

The readers seem to have a clever ability to main-

tain order, and they will need it because in the end

there is no domain they won’t be confronted with.

When they started they found an interesting mix of

contemporary issues and those that are more long

term.”

Ehlers concludes, “Reader’s Edition is doing

what I dreamed of with my web site a few years

ago but which I could not then realize technically.

Reader’s Edition is more than a competitor to the

known print media. It will bring new forms of news

and views which you didn’t even know existed.”

Citizen Reporting in Brazil

The information highway belongs

in the hands of the people

by Guilherme Lopes Neves

Audience participation in the creation of news

content is not simply an online phenomenon, at

least not in Brazil. Radio stations like Jovem Pam

used to put the public on the air reporting the traf-

fic, for example, and I’m sure that all over the

world other companies have done the same.

But the Internet obviously gives the public

much more chance to be heard, seen and read. The

Net is a great leveler, equalizing the production of

journalists and their audience.

Years after Ohmynews started citizen reporting

at a level unimagined by many people, the big cor-

porations have started to do the same.

Steve Outing pinpointed this “move” by the

mainstream media in an article on Poynter Online,

Page 13

in which he writes: “To varying degrees, news or-

ganizations are giving their audience greater oppor-

tunities to participate.”

Outing names the BBC as an example, and we

can add to it CNN, AOL, and many others big me-

dia organizations.

In Brazil, there are three user-generated con-

tent projects. They are from the sites iG, Terra, and

Globo Online; all of them accept texts,

photographs, video and audio from the public.

Everything started with the Reader-Reporter

section on iG. Anyone could write and send stories

to them. After checking the information, the text

was published. This was in about the year 2000.

Globo Online, is part of a huge communication

company, Globo Organizations, which has newspa-

pers, radio stations and television stations. The site

was inaugurated in 1996. And in this year it started

the Eu-Reporter (I-Reporter) section, with texts,

videos and photos sent by the audience.

We also have the Vc-Reporter (something like

U-Reporter, with “U” meaning you) section on the

Terra Web site. Belonging to the Spanish commu-

nications corporation Telefonica, Terra does the

same as Globo, receiving the material from the

public by mail.

In the year 2006, iG set up the My News site,

accepting users’ collaboration, and allowing read-

ers to comment on the articles.

All these Brazilian sites are focused on news

and facts. But, at least two of them, Globo and iG,

accept opinion texts, published with identification,

at iG, and in a different section at Globo.

The texts are published in their integrity, with

small changes.

None of these organizations pays for the col-

laborations; not even a symbolic amount. All sites

make very clear that once the text is submitted,

they can do whatever they want to it. Those are the

rules.

The major difference between these sites and

OhmyNews is the fact that participating at OMNI

makes you part of a community of citizen reporters,

engaged in journalism free from the mainstream.

Since I’ve started writing for OMNI this year

I’ve been feeling that I’m part of something greater

and truly democratic, not simply contributing to a

big news medium. I could finally, after seven years

studying and five working as journalist, feel like a

reporter.

All because first, you decide the subject, the

approach and your sources; second, you have space

enough to examine the subject deeply; and third,

you sign the article, read the comments and know

how many people have read your story. Everything

a “usual” journalist has, we have here.

An alternative to the big news

In Brazil, the media is highly concentrated,

which is a shame for democracy. It happens that

when the owners of media companies don’t want

the population to know something, people just

won’t know. It is like being responsible for a public

highway and only allowing people you want to ride

along it.

The information highway needs to be in the

citizens’ hands and participatory journalism can do

that.

Contributing to a big content site is a good

start. It will be even better if citizen reporters keep

their own blogs, for example, to discuss subjects of

communitarian interest, and not go to the main-

stream to get attention.

At the big corporations there is every chance

that the audience contributions get lost under the

content generated by the staff journalists, who

don’t communicate with the citizens.

I don’t think those initiatives are a bad idea;

they are a good start.

Citizen journalism could be an alternative to

big media speech. But right now it is just becoming

a part of it.

There are initiatives in Brazil that are more

democratic and where all the content is collabora-

tive, but compared to spaces like OMNI, there is lot

more that can be done in Brazil.

Netizens in Japan Take a

New Step Forward

by Ronda Hauben

I want to welcome Ohmynews Japan which has

just been launched in Japan. This is an important

step in the effort to spread the Korean Ohmynews

model to other countries, both by learning how to

build on the lessons from the Korean model and

Page 14

how to change the model to respond to different

local conditions.

While the Korean Ohmynews emphasized

“‘open-minded progress’ in order to change the

distorted environment in the conservative-domi-

nated media” in South Korea, Ohmynews Japan

will instead have a policy of “‘political and ideo-

logical neutrality’ in order to fit the socio-political

environment in Japan,” announced Oh Yeon-ho,

the founder and CEO of Ohmynews. He also

explained that citizen reporters in Japan will use

their real names in their articles, just as citizen re-

porters in Korea are required to do; however, pen

names will be “allowed for some exceptional cir-

cumstances.”

An article describing the launch of Ohmynews

Japan reported that “bloggers and netizens in Japan

are actively discussing directions and approaches

Ohmynews should take.”

It is good to see that bloggers and netizens in

Japan have the opportunity to contribute to

Ohmynews Japan and to help it to develop and

spread.

This is a welcome sign, as it is a reminder of

how Japanese researchers and Japanese society

welcomed the concept of “netizen” in the mid

1990s and helped it to spread in Japan.

In 1995, Professor Shumpei Kumon, the direc-

tor of the GLOCOM Institute (Global Communica-

tions Institution) in Japan, learned of research by a

young researcher and invited the researcher, Mi-

chael Hauben, to Japan to share his research.

In 1996, Hauben wrote a description of the role

played by Professor Kumon in helping to spread

the concept of netizen in Japan, Hauben writes:

“A little under one year ago, I received a letter

sent through the Internet, via electronic mail. The

letter was sent by a professor from Japan, and con-

cerned studies we were both interested in....The

specific concern was about the emergence of

Netizens, or people who use computer networks

who consider themselves to be part of a global

identity. The Netizen is part of a developing global

cooperative community.”

Hauben shared the email from Professor

Kumon he had received a year before in 1995

which said in part: “I am a social scientist in Japan

writing on information revolution and

information-oriented civilization. Since I came

across the term ‘netizen’ about a year ago. I have

been fascinated by this idea. It seems that the age

of not only technological-industrial but also politi-

cal-social revolution is coming, comparable to the

‘citizen’s revolution’ in the past. I would very

much like to do a book on that theme.” (E-mail

from Professor Kumon)

Professor Kumon appreciated Hauben’s role in

developing and spreading the concept of netizen as

a new form of online citizenship, a new form of

social identity and consciousness.

Professor

Kumon invited Hauben to Japan to be one of the

guest speakers at the Hypernetwork '95 Beppu Bay

Conference on the “Netizen Revolution.”

A little while later, Professor Kumon published

a book in Japanese titled, “The Age of Netizens.” It

included a chapter by Hauben “The Birth of the

Netizens.”

Also when Hauben’s book “Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet” was

published in a print edition in the U.S., a Japanese

translation soon followed.

One of the netizens that Hauben met when he

was in Japan was Hiroyuki Takahashi, at the time a

college student. Takahashi suggested that there be a

netizen association formed to help to spread the

Internet and to encourage people to learn how to

become part of the online world.

Though the netizen association wasn’t able to

form at the time, the beginning of Ohmynews Japan

to develop citizen journalism in Japan and the

OhmyNews model is a hopeful sign. It is a means to

continue efforts to spread the Internet and to en-

courage people to use the Net in ways that will be

helpful for their lives and for society.

Notes:

1. “OhmyNews Japan Debuts” (http://english.ohmynews.com/

ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=313808&rel_no=

1&back_url=)

2. http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/text/netizen-a-call.html

3. http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.xpr

4. http://groups.google.com/group/fj.misc/msg/65a9f2d1109d64b6?

dmode=source

5. The Japanese edition was published in 1997 by Chuokoron-Sha,

Inc. The url for the online English edition is: http://www.columbia

.edu/~hauben/netbook/

Page 15

Exporting Citizen

Journalism

Sites in Denmark and Israel

Demonstrate That Ohmynews Model Is

Spreading

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

The OhmyNews International Citizen

Reporters’ Forum 2006 session describing how citi-

zen journalism has spread to Denmark and Israel

was an important contribution to the forum. Erik

Larsen who founded and is CEO of Flix.dk in Den-

mark and Michael Weiss who founded Scoop.co.il

in Israel presented fascinating descriptions of the

online news sites they have begun in their respec-

tive countries.

Flix.dk began in 2003 before there was an

English version of OhmyNews. Larsen described

how he read an article about Ohmynews in 2003

and had to go to someone who could translate the

Korean so he could learn as much as possible about

Ohmynews in its Korean edition. Flix.dk was

launched in November 2003 from a small computer

in Larsen’s apartment using open-source software.

At first he worked with two colleagues to provide

the management and friends, family, and

colleagues contributed the articles. For the first

year, in addition to stories from others, the three

editors would write “a column a day,” Larson

explained, “focusing on some unconventional news

story or taking a deeper look at news and media

culture in general.”

The goal for Larsen and his colleagues was to

create a site for citizen reporting that would be

based on sound journalistic practices and

user-created content and the sharing of knowledge.

Their hope was that this would lead to having

better information available to people and that the

articles and discussion would help people to change

their view of the world to have a more accurate

view and ultimately more democracy.

Flix.dk thus far has been a non-profit model.

Larsen realizes that he needs additional funding as

it grows but that there is a need to be careful about

what the sources of funds are, as certain sources of

funding can be very detrimental to the ability to

have a democratic media. He refers to examples of

how certain forms of funding ended up destroying

the newspapers they were supposed to support, as

described in the book Market Driven Journalism by

John McManus.

Larsen described how certain articles in

Flix.dk provided breakthroughs in spreading

knowledge of and gaining contributors for the on-

line newspaper. One such case was the “Keld

Bach-case” in Spring 2004 where a Danish blogger

was threatened by some lawyers and told he had to

remove some links on his blog or he would be lia-

ble for a large amount of money. The lawyers, in

threatening the blogger, were violating his rights,

and the coverage of the story on Flix.dk led to live

radio show coverage, so that the lawyers had to

publicly apologize to the blogger.

Larsen told of the difficulty of finding funds to

help Flix.dk grow, but that the site is appreciated

by the Danish public and contributors. Given the

crisis he outlined in the Danish media environment,

there is a serious need for Flix.dk.

Scoop.co.il came into operation after the last

Ohmynews Forum. Weiss began his talk with the

statement that “it is tempting to think that money

runs the world.” Instead, however, he explained

that the real fuel is vision. He hopes that Scoop will

be a tool for making change.

In his talk, Weiss described how he recruited

citizen reporters by sending invitations to those

bloggers and others online whom he felt would

make a valuable contribution to Scoop.co.il. Also

he described how there are rewards for doing a cer-

tain number of stories but that citizen reporters re-

ceive no payment for their articles.

The funding for Scoop.co.il initially came

from an Israeli venture capitalist. Citizen reporters

who want to sign up to write are put through a

screening process, and have an initial phone con-

versation with an editor.

Weiss also hopes to start soon an English

language section of Scoop.co.il. There are many

contributors from diverse sections of Israeli society

for stories for Scoop.co.il.

These two presentations were a highlight of the

2006 forum. They are concrete embodiments show-

ing that the model provided by Ohmynews Korea

can lead to different variations and can be estab-

lished in other countries and in other languages.

Page 16

These examples of other working citizen journal-

ism sites raise the hope that by next year’s

Ohmynews forum, there will not only be many

more citizen reporters but also several more exam-

ples of online sites inspired by the model that

Ohmynews Korea is pioneering.

Netizens Are Critical to

Citizen Journalism

[Citizen Reporters in Their Own Words]

Ronda Hauben from the U.S.

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

It is with a smile that I prepare today to go to

Korea and the 2006 Ohmynews International Citi-

zen Reporters’ Forum.

When leaving the forum last year I remember

having a conversation with one of the citizen re-

porters. She said she had been thinking and felt that

perhaps one of the most important aspects of citi-

zen journalism was that there are netizens, people

online who have found that the Internet is helpful

in their efforts and desire to make the world a

better place.

She felt that it was from the netizens that the

significant aspects of citizen journalism will de-

velop. She told me she wanted to be sure to share

this with me before she left the forum.

I first came to learn about Ohmynews in 2003

when I saw an article in the Financial Times that

said the “netizens” in South Korea had made it pos-

sible to elect the president of the country. This

made me curious and I wanted to learn what I could

about what had happened.

From Korean friends online and off I came to

know about Ohmynews. A Korean friend showed

me the Korean edition, which was all there was in

2003, and she translated some of the many com-

ments there were on different articles.

She encouraged me to write to founder Oh

Yeon-ho with my questions about Ohmynews.

I probably did try to write an email and sent it,

but don’t remember exactly and didn’t at the time

get an answer. Instead Mr. Oh, it seems, was pre-

paring to do an English edition so that the many

people who were interested in Ohmynews but who

couldn’t read Korean would still get an idea of the

idea of citizen journalism.

A little while later, a netizen I met online said

she would submit an article I had written about the

Howard Dean campaign in the U.S. to Ohmynews.

In it I compared Dean’s election campaign to the

campaign for the presidency of South Korea. She

translated it into Korean, and it appeared in both

English and Korean in an issue of the Korean

Ohmynews in March of 2004.

This all raises an important question for me

that I hope will be considered at the 2006 forum:

How is the spread of Ohmynews and Ohmynews

International connected to the fight for democracy?

The fact that the birth of the Korean edition of

OMN was connected to the continuing fight for

democracy in South Korea seems an important as-

pect of any effort to spread the lessons from the

Korean Ohmynews to other publications and to

other countries.

The netizens of South Korea who contributed

their articles as citizen reporters when OMN began

and who continued to contribute the articles as it

grew, are a factor that is to be considered and un-

derstood. Also, it seems there was a staff for the

newspaper which not only encouraged the submis-

sions, but who also helped to cover the develop-

ments in the fight for more democracy in Korea for

the young newspaper.

I have found that learning about and under-

standing the developments in the Korean fight for

more democracy is an encouragement to continue

working with Ohmynews. I often wish that

Ohmynews would have more of the articles from

the Korean version of the newspaper translated into

English to be part of the English edition. That way

there would be more knowledge of what is happen-

ing in Korea among those who read and write for

the International edition of the newspaper.

Next year is the 20

anniversary of the victory

of the 1987 revolution in South Korea. Perhaps in

honor of this event Ohmynews can find a way to

share more of the events of the Korean democrati-

zation efforts with those who can only read the

English edition.

I often wonder if there is any way there could

be an American version of Ohmynews which would

Page 17

be a champion in the fight against the conservative

press and politics that dominate U.S. society. It

seems so difficult to consider this possibility here

in the U.S. as the conservative forces are so strong

and pervasive.

It seems that they would find a way to impose

the need to make money on whatever was created,

rather than recognizing the need to have a social

purpose as the critical thrust. This is why I feel it is

so important to have some knowledge of how

Ohmynews grew out of the progressive movement

in South Korea. It is important to remember that an

early goal of Mr. Oh was to create a media culture

in which “the quality of news determined whether

it won or lost,” not the power and prestige of the

media organization that printed the article.

Last year’s forum was a very memorable expe-

rience. There are many special events I recall, but

the most special was after I gave the brief talk I had

been invited to give. Several citizen reporters for

the Korean edition of Ohmynews came to embrace

me and thank me for the talk. The talk I gave was

about the online research of Michael Hauben in

1992-1993 which discovered that the Net was en-

couraging people to be able to participate as citi-

zens in a way previously impossible.

This research — observing what was develop-

ing on the Net — resulted in the concept of

“netizen.” The continuing spread of the Net and the

netizens are symbolized by “netizens” I met during

last year’s OMNI forum. They, in turn, are a tribute

to and an encouragement for the spread of OMNI’s

great experiment.

Citizen Journalism Not

About ‘Amateurs’ or ‘Pros’

Interview with Ohmynews

Citizen Reporter Ronda Hauben

[Editor’s Note: This is an interview with

Ohmynews International featured writer Ronda

Hauben for the Korean online publication ABC Pa-

per by Heewon Kim, a researcher who received her

MA a year ago from Yonsei University in Cultural

Studies.

The interview appears in the Aug. 31, 2006

issue of ABC Paper in Korean. The interview here

is a slightly edited version of the Korean original.]

ABC: Can you write a short self-introduction for

the readers about your main interests and your

research? Or just say hello to the ABC Paper sub-

scribers.

RH: As a bit of background, I recently returned

from a wonderful visit to Korea. I was invited to

attend the Ohmynews International Citizen Report-

ers Forum in July. After that was over, I stayed in

Seoul for several days.

I have a great deal of respect for what netizens

have achieved in Korea. (Here I am using ‘netizen’

in the sense of one who acts as a citizen of the net,

rather than the use of the term as any user.)

I am co-author of the book “Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.”

The book was put online in January 1994.

During this visit to Korea I met with Yun

Young-min, who is a sociology professor at

Hanyang University. He showed me his book in

Korean about the Internet.

The book is “A Theory of Electronic Informa-

tion Space: A Sociological Exploration of the Com-

puter Network” (Seoul: Jeonyewon, 1996). It in-

cluded a number of references to “Netizens.” He

had written to me an email message explaining that

the book “Netizens” encouraged him to push for-

ward his plan to write a book about cyberspace in

Korean. It was quite wonderful to see an actual

early reference to the book “Netizens” in a Korean

book about the Internet.

I am especially interested in the impact of the

Internet and of netizens on the continuing struggle

to extend democracy, in theory and practice. South

Page 18

Korea is in the forefronts of the world with regard

to the spread of broadband access, and has a strong

tradition of a democratic movement. Perhaps that

accounts for why South Korea is in the forefronts

of exploring how the Internet can be a “laboratory

for democracy.”

I am doing research about the experience of

netizens in Korea and have tried to help spread

knowledge about these important developments.

I would welcome collaboration with Korean

netizens and other researchers.

ABC: We know you have researched Internet jour-

nalism and netizen participation in Korea for a long

time. What was the first motivation to you? Is there

any particular event or opportunity which led you

to Korea?

RH: I first learned about the important develop-

ments in South Korea when I saw in 2003 a refer-

ence on the front page of the Financial Times

newspaper that the president of South Korea was

elected by netizens.

It was fascinating to see both that netizens in

South Korea were mentioned on the front page of

the Financial Times and that they were credited

with bringing about the election of a head of state.

This was a significant achievement. I knew it was

important to learn about what was happening in

South Korea.

ABC: In Korea, the concept of ‘netizen’ seems to

be usually misunderstood. Can you explain the ex-

act meaning of it to Korean people?

RH: My co-author of “Netizens,” Michael Hauben,

did research online in 1992-1993 to determine what

impact computer networking was having on the

lives of those who had access to the Net. What he

observed was that many of the people who

responded to some questions he posted online, were

excited about what the Net made possible for them.

Also, though, surprisingly many of those who

wrote explained that the Net was an important de-

velopment and they wanted it to grow and flourish

and to be available to anyone who wanted access.

Just as the French term “citoyen” or citizen,

was used during the time of the French Revolution

to signify a social identity of an individual who

contributes to his or her society, both on a national

and international basis, so the term ‘netizen’ re-

flects a new non-geographical socially based mem-

bership.

The term ‘netizen,’ as it was originally created,

was used to describe people who cared about the

Net and the larger world it is part of and work to-

ward building the cooperative and collective nature

which benefits the larger world. In this case the

word represents positive activity and no adjective

need be used.

Another use of the term ‘netizen’ developed,

one which refers to anyone who uses the Net for

any purpose. Then the term is prefixed with adjec-

tives, like good or bad.

I reserve the term ‘netizen’ for those who de-

vote time and effort to make the Net, and the world

it is part of, a better place. (Michael described this

distinction in the Preface to “Netizens.” This is on-

line at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/)

ABC: In addition, do you think netizen participa-

tion will be more activated in the near future? Or

do you think we have many new obstacles against

the netizen movement?

RH: During my recent visit to Seoul, a number of

the people I spoke with were concerned about what

the prospects were in the near future for the netizen

movement.

I think that having a longer term perspective

which takes into account the important achieve-

ments of netizens in Korea thus far, and also tries

to understand how the difficulties in the past have

been overcome, would be helpful.

For example, in reviewing what happened with

regard to the Hwang Woo-suk affair (i.e. the Ko-

rean stem cell scientist), it is important to keep in

mind the achievements of young netizen scientists

and other netizens who posted online what was

wrong with Hwang’s papers and spread the expo-

sure on the Internet.

Some felt this would reflect poorly on Korea

and Korean science. To the contrary, the ability to

uncover fraudulent scientific activity reflects very

highly on Korean scientists and on Korea. The abil-

ity to counter all the efforts to cover up the scien-

tific fraud was an important achievement of

netizens in Korea.

I realize that there were those online who sup-

ported Hwang. I am, however, reserving the word

‘netizen’ for those who were active in the fight for

honesty in science.

ABC: You did various case studies on grassroots

journalism. Especially you are very interested in

Ohmynews, and also contributing as a citizen re-

Page 19

porter. What do you think of the social effects of

Ohmynews?

RH: Part of the concept of ‘citizen journalism’ is a

return to the idea of journalism having a public pur-

pose and responsibility. The Internet has made it

possible to reinvent the concept of news so that the

real-life conditions of more people and their news

and views become part of what is recognized as

journalism.

This isn’t an “amateur” journalism replacing a

“professional” journalism. Rather it is an extension

of who is to be able to contribute to what is consid-

ered as “news.”

In the U.S. there is a great effort to defend

“corporate journalism,” i.e. a journalism which re-

flects the news and views of the powerful and the

wealthy in U.S. society.

The Internet, however, expands those whose

‘voice’ can be heard.

The development of citizen journalism where

it is not only that readers can discuss what “journal-

ists” write, but where readers contribute as “jour-

nalists” is an important contribution to the effort to

define a 21

century journalism.

ABC: Now Ohmynews became quite influential, so

it is regarded as a very successful model. Do you

think this kind of model can be successful in other

countries? Or do you think there are unique

features/background in Korea?

RH: It is not accidental that Ohmynews could be

developed in South Korea. It is in South Korea that

there has been the confluence of both widespread

access to broadband, and the democratic achieve-

ments of the 1987 revolution. There is also a con-

tinuing commitment to carry on the struggle for

democracy by a significant sector of Korean soci-

ety.

But while South Korea is a special place with

regard to these elements, I don’t believe it is

unique. Instead, I feel that as lessons are learned

from the experience of the Korean edition of

Ohmynews, these lessons can make it possible to

develop other versions of Ohmynews elsewhere.

ABC: What is your expectation of Ohmynews Ja-

pan?

RH: I wish those who are beginning Ohmynews

Japan well.

It is an important effort they are undertaking. I

feel that most important will be what goal is set for

Ohmynews Japan. When I told a Japanese friend

about the effort to begin Ohmynews Japan, he won-

dered whether it would be able to become a major

opinion leader in Japan.

Can Ohmynews Japan champion the voice of

the powerless so it will be heard? Can it support

those who are concerned with the broader social

needs of society and support their efforts for re-

form?

A while ago, I was told that some in Japan are

afraid to speak out using their own names as they

are concerned that they will be penalized. If this is

a current problem, it would seem important that

Ohmynews Japan take this problem into account

and communicate with netizens in Japan raising the

question about what to do with regard to such

problems.

Will Ohmynews Japan welcome contributions

from netizens in Japan? Will netizens find a way to

support and help Ohmynews Japan to develop?

These are some of the challenges that I believe lie

ahead for Ohmynews Japan.

ABC: In the U.S., there are many people who ex-

press their political opinion. (e.g. bloggers) It

seems to be easy that everyone can make his/her

own channel to spread their opinions and

arguments. Maybe is this a reason for the failure of

Bayosphere? What do you think of the main rea-

sons of the closure of Bayosphere?

RH: I don’t know the reason for the failure of

Bayosphere, other than the short statement that was

posted by Dan Gillmor when he announced he was

ending it. In his statement he mentioned that he had

depended on startup funding and on trying to find

further funding.

Someone posted in response that it would be

interesting if a researcher compared the creation of

Ohmynews with Gillmor’s efforts to create

Bayosphere.

I felt this was a helpful focus. When the Ko-

rean Ohmynews began, it devoted resources to sup-

port the blacklist movement which had as its

purpose to document which policians were unfit for

public office. Also it welcomed netizens and their

contributions and even paid them a little for their

work. The Korean Ohmynews began as part of an

effort to provide an effective counter to the conser-

vative press.

These socially oriented efforts of the Korean

Ohmynews provide a basis for support by netizens.

Page 20

I don’t know if there were similar socially oriented

efforts of Bayosphere when it began.

Even more important, however, is the fact that

Ohmynews has welcomed progressive people to

contribute their news and views.

This didn’t seem to be the case, in my experi-

ence, with Bayosphere. Instead it seemed to be fo-

cused on a more narrow technical community.

ABC: People are starting to enjoy multimedia, not

only text, so that many websites like youtube.com

have become very popular. We can see similar phe-

nomena in Korea. Do you think this can change the

power/relationships of existing mainstream broad-

casting media? (As blogs and Ohmynews vs. exist-

ing newspapers.)

RH: Sure. Already online videos are providing a

challenge to the mainstream media.

Netizen journalism in all forms of media, how-

ever, would benefit from having a consciousness of

what kind of media is needed as the alternative to

the mainstream media.

It is helpful to look at what is being developed

and to also have an ongoing collective conversation

about what is desired.

My view of a netizen media is a media which

makes it possible for the common people to have

more power over their lives and over the decisions

that affect them. This could be part of the needed

vision for the development of a netizen media.

ABC: Finally, do you have a next plan to visit Se-

oul again? In addition, what will be your next re-

search?

RH: Yes I would like to visit Seoul again soon. It

was wonderful to have been invited to conferences

in Korea last year and this year and to have had the

opportunity to have discussions with Korean

researchers and activists interested in democracy.

Actually I would like to be able to spend six

months in Korea so I could do more serious re-

search about the role of netizens in Korean democ-

ratization. Spending some time in Korea would

help me to become more familiar with the Korean

language, which would also help my research. Un-

fortunately I don’t speak Korean so I hope to find a

collaborator who can help me know more about the

content of Korean language posts on the Internet.

Currently, I am working on a proposal for an

updated edition, a second edition of “Netizens: On

the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.”

I would like to have a section of the book

about the role of netizens in extending democracy.

The achievements of netizens in Korea would be an

important part of the section.

I have been working on some draft papers

about netizens and democracy in Korea.

The papers are online and I welcome com-

ments and discussion of them.

The papers are:

1. The Rise of Netizen Democracy A case study of

netizens’ impact on democracy in South Korea.

(http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/netizenssko

rea.txt)

2. The New Dynamics of Democratization in South

Korea The Internet and the Emergence of the

Netizen. (http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/

paperkorea.txt)

3. Carother’s Critique of the Transition Paradigm

and the 2002 Presidential Election Campaign in

South Korea ‘The Netizens and the Conservative

Print Media. (http://www.ais.org/~ronda/

new.papers/korea-carothers.doc)

I also have an outline for a paper about the his-

tory and impact on democratic developments of the

internet in Korea: What is the Impact of Netizens

on South Korean Democratization?

A version of the book “Netizens: On the His-

tory and Impact of Usenet and the Internet” is on-

line.

I would appreciate comments and discussion

toward doing a 2

edition of the book. Perhaps

there could even be a Korean translation of a 2

edition.

I would like to see a version of Ohmynews like

the original Korean Ohmynews for the U.S. I would

want to be part of the staff that helps to provide the

editorial direction for such an undertaking. It would

be wonderful to have a netizen online newspaper in

the U.S., which would collaborate with other

netizen media around the world.

Both parties welcome comments and discussion of

the issues raised in this interview. Heewon Kim

maintains a blog at hypercortex.net.

Page 21

Where Do You Head, Citizen

Journalism?

Impressions from Ohmynews

International Citizen Reporters’ Forum

by Alexander Krabbe

[Citizen Journalism and Beyond/OhmyTV] 2006

Two years after the launch of Ohmynews Inter-

national, different forms of citizen journalism have

appeared on the Internet. At Ohmynews’ second

International Citizen Reporters’ Forum, key repre-

sentatives presented the special characteristics of

their forms of citizen-participatory journalism.

What can be learned from them? Will there be

a common perspective, a common dream that can

bind the different projects together in order to form

an effective counterweight to traditional media?

Diversity

Presentations by Tim Lord, managing editor of

Slashdot.org and Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of

Globalvoicesonline.org, revealed their approaches

to their audience, and gave the forum’s attendees a

better idea of the diverse ways citizens could par-

ticipate in online media.

Slashdot.org and Globalvoicesonline.org differ

very much from the Ohmynews project, which may

be considered an attempt to integrate bloggers into

a semi-professional editing process. At Ohmynews,

editors help citizen reporters create articles of a

certain standard of quality.

Slashdot.org in the words of Lord, rather forms

a contribution factory in which comments on news

are promoted. Citizens contributing to the Web site

will remain anonymous, increasing the chance of

keeping discussion on various topics alive and dy-

namic.

“Contentious,” “interested” and “helpful to

each other” is how Lord describes the people who

contribute to Slashdot.org. However, moderators

decide where a comment will be placed and thus

how much attention it may gather, which has dis-

pleased some contributors.

Consequentially, anti-Slashdot.org Web sites

have already popped up, which in a way confirms

the original’s popularity among Internet users. The

most popular Web site critical of Lord and his col-

leagues is named, as one can guess, Anti-slash.org.

Lacking in Cooperation

When asked how he regarded future coopera-

tion between different citizen journalism projects,

Lord remained reserved: “It is difficult, for exam-

ple, to place permanent links connecting various

citizen media projects to each other. One cannot be

sure whether the readers will accept that. Besides,

many Web sites are already over-linked.”

Zuckerman seemed more open-minded toward

establishing a vital cooperation between the numer-

ous citizen media projects. “We already face a lot

of cooperation with other forms of citizen partici-

pation Web sites,” he said. Close contact would be

held with Reporters Without Borders.

Globalvoicesonline.org, which gets 900,000

hits per month, gives bloggers a chance to present

their personal stories to a global audience in a pro-

fessional environment. Zuckerman calls it an “am-

plification of blogs, rather citizen media than citi-

zen journalism,” as emphasized by its aim of point-

ing out divergence in media focusing that leaves

large regions uncovered by the conventional press.

Africa suffers from a lack of internet access,

which makes reporting from countries such as Ni-

geria difficult. Zuckerman pointed out the asymme-

try of media attention by comparing Nigeria and

Japan – two countries with almost the same number

of inhabitants, but with very different proportions

in media representation.

Ohmynews founder and CEO Oh Yeon-ho

looks at future cooperation in the citizen media

sphere on a greater time scale: “We find citizen

journalism today in an early stage. Various forms

are developing in this environment. There may be

cooperation between grown projects in the future.”

Thus, citizen journalism today consists of

many islands. Globalvoicesonline.org and

Slashdot.org are but two examples. At the forum,

Lord and Zuckerman only presented their islands,

neglecting the chance to develop concrete plans for

inter-project cooperation. Not a single suggestion

in this direction was to be heard.

American technology writer and former col-

umnist Dan Gillmor, now engaged in his own citi-

zen journalism project, expressed his view on the

issue this way: “I think cooperation between the

different grass roots journalism projects will be

hard.” Gillmor, however, on Ourmedia.org offers

basic information to those intending to run partici-

patory media projects. A learning center that shows

Page 22

how to create video blogs, podcasts, screencasts,

digital stories, and other emerging media forms can

be found easily on that Web site.

Outlook

This author’s impression from the Citizen Re-

porters’ Forum is stamped by the lack of connec-

tion between different participatory media Web

sites. Maybe the reason for this is that the old elite

of the early Internet age still dominate*. They grew

up with ideological fights over operating systems

and source codes and consequentially coined the

term “flame war.” As with the beginning of many

progressive movements, the power of citizen jour-

nalism appears to be split.

Nevertheless, the citizen reporters attending

the forum represent a new generation that stands at

the gates of the participatory era. Unlike the

ego-focused hacker generation, these engaged peo-

ple – from different countries, from all social

classes, and from every age – seem to form a united

movement. One day their spirit may give citizen

journalism a new dynamic, bringing the media into

the people’s hands.

*Note: The editors see the early history as a time of

great sharing and equality. The early hackers were

respected constructive members of the community.

Ohmynews Changed My

Perspective

[Citizen Reporters in Their Own Words]

Amit Pyakurel from Nepal

by Amit Pyakurel

My name is Amit Pyakurel, a college student

from Nepal, and I have been a citizen reporter for

Ohmynews for a while now. My first encounter

with Ohmynews was an exciting experience and left

me overjoyed that my first article about the conflict

in my country got published on the front page of

the site. This also led me tsee that even a person

like me, who hasn’t yet made a firm commitment

to a journalism career, could tell the story to a

global audience.

Though I am like a toddler in the field of jour-

nalism, my work with Ohmynews International has

changed my perspective on the society I live in and

on the world at large. Political and social issues are

my fields of interest, and I do often become con-

cerned with various issues, good and bad, from

other parts of the world having to do with my live-

lihood. And since becoming a citizen reporter for

Ohmynews I feel that my concerns have acquired a

new direction, which I can express through my

writings, letting a wide range of people worldwide

attend to and respond to my stories.

Working with Ohmynews has further helped

me to see that writing, especially on sensitive social

or political matters, is not a cakewalk. You needn’t

just know what has happened, but why and how.

Getting a deeper sense of an issue means hard work

and practice, thinking, and patience. Though I can’t

expect such skills to develop in an amateur like

myself all at once, I do appreciate the job of the

brainy staffers associated with Ohmynews who re-

mark on my work and make suggestions, point out

my mistakes, and encourage me to do better. This

helps me develop motivation with responsibility.

Today’s world is no longer confined to a par-

ticular social milieu or within the territory of any

national boundary. The social conflicts, poverty,

and other forms of human suffering are no longer a

concern just of the people directly or indirectly af-

fected by them but now have also become the con-

cern of people living remotely from the actual hap-

penings. Thanks to the advancements in informa-

tion technology that have narrowed the world in

this manner, making it like a single village, and

Ohmynews’ idea of citizen journalism, a new di-

mension is added to this concept of a “global vil-

lage.”

I admire Ohmynews’ concept, “Every Citizen a

Reporter,” aiming as it does to bring together the

voices of global, everyday citizens and their con-

cerns with events around them. People from differ-

ent walks of life and with different perspectives

should come together by means of this common

platform and generate a wider range of ideas about

issues, something that, I believe, could get us closer

to their resolution on the basis of an understanding

created through this global debate.

Page 23

Ohmynews is certainly establishing a unique

trend in the field of journalism, in which anyone

can participate, and it already consists of intelligent

and hardworking staffers, who, I believe, have a

glorious vision to grow this news industry amid a

vibrant global media market. As its goal is to pro-

vide information not generally covered by the tradi-

tional media, I think mere reportage is not what

Ohmynews should be about. A new perspective or

commentary on some common issues and on those

making the headlines could satisfy a modern audi-

ence seeking something other than traditional news

stories. I think Ohmynews could also lend special

interest to the in-depth reporting and assessment of

individual issues not usually contained in the pro-

fessional media.

When the civil conflict spearheaded by the de-

cade-old bloody Maoist insurgency was already

making global headlines, not only the Nepalese but

the international community abruptly became more

concerned when King Gyanendra staged a coup in

February 2005, overriding civil liberties and re-

stricting press freedom. It was in the latter days of

the coup’s legacy, when demonstrations against the

monarchy began to disrupt the national economy,

that I joined Ohmynews as a citizen reporter.

During the latest 19-day protests, the people’s

burning resentment against the royal regime and its

oppression rose to a new height. Not an officially

accredited journalist with an ID tag, I was rarely

out on the streets to collect first-hand information

on the crisis. I did refer to the local media and on-

line news sites in combination with my own experi-

ence to cover the news stories. The turmoil in my

country did arouse my feelings, and I felt that, at

least, “I am having my say about these events for a

global audience” as I began to write for Ohmynews.

The Internet has brought about an information

revolution, but in Nepal, its use hasn’t yet been all

that convenient for the ordinary citizen. I have a

dial-up connection, which has been helpful for me

in working for Ohmynews, but it’s slow, expensive,

and unreliable. Because of these considerations and

technical unavailability in most places, broadband

and cable Internet have yet to make their debut in

Nepal.

It seems just a short time ago that journalism

itself began to take root here. The nonpartisan

Panchayat rule from 1960 to 1990 was a black era

for the media, as the press was systematically and

brutally suppressed in that period. The press es-

caped suffocation after the multiparty democracy

was established in 1990, and the ensuing constitu-

tion ruled out press restrictions, with some excep-

tions, like the prohibition of any kind of criticism

of the monarchy.

The press in Nepal experienced another op-

pressive episode during King Gyanendra’s

15-months of dictatorial rule. Regarding Nepal’s

recent political transformation, its parliament, aris-

ing from the massive people’s movement in April,

has attempted to do away with the speech restric-

tions, especially on criticism of the king and the

royal family.

Another media form that has revolutionized

information flow in Nepal for some time now is the

FM radio stations. Initially, having only one

state-owned AM radio station named Radio Nepal,

we are witness now to a number of private FM sta-

tions, which are gaining in popularity. Though

some FM stations that thrived initially focused only

on entertainment, avoiding politics and

news-oriented material, some newly emerging pri-

vate FM stations have brought Nepal into a new

information age, making rural residents, the major-

ity of the population, aware of political and social

issues.

There has been a remarkable upsurge in the

media market in Nepal since the establishment of

democracy in 1990. Along with many local news-

papers, some private dailies, like Kantipur, have

gained a lot of popularity, as at first there was only

the state-owned Gorkhapatra daily, which monopo-

lized newspaper publishing. Initially there was only

the state-owned Nepal Television, today there are

four other private TV channels whose dissemina-

tion of the news has been able to attract wider pub-

lic attention. People have yearned for fairness in

the news since the state-owned media during the

dictatorship dispersed artificial and misleading in-

formation to subdue the democratic process.

Thanks to the emerging media market in our

country, we no longer have to depend upon a media

monopoly, and such multilateral media could help

to make information more fairly available to the

public. As the media situation has significantly im-

proved in Nepal, although aiming to be better in the

future, the practice of citizen journalism here does

not seem such a far-fetched expectation. But

Ohmynews’ model of “paid citizen journalism”

Page 24

could still be a distant goal in as economically frag-

ile a developing country as Nepal. It would be a

different thing if some popular media industry

could follow up on this trend based on economic

success, but this could include only a compara-

tively small number of urban people, not the major-

ity living in the countryside, where poverty and

illiteracy are rampant.

Researching the ‘My’ in

Ohmynews

An Exploratory Paper into the Workings

of Citizen Journalists in Korea

by Shaun W. Sutton

As both a communications researcher at the

University of Leeds and a fanatic of anything Ko-

rean, I have been struck by the various activities of

Ohmynews citizen journalists.

Indeed, since OhmyNews’ founding in early

2000, Korean news guerrillas have been attracting

the attention of world leaders, media organisations,

and interested academics and citizens alike.

In response, over the past six months I have

been conducting a detailed academic investigation

into the popularity behind the success of

OhmyNews.

This investigation gives a unique insight into

the Korean version of OhmyNews, and readers of

Ohmynews International will no doubt find interest

in the results when comparing the Korean case

study to their respective countries.

The investigation’s purpose has been to find

out exactly why citizen journalists write articles for

OhmyNews. With the support from the News Guer-

rilla Team in Seoul, an empirical survey was ad-

ministered to a sample of OhmyNews contributors,

with these results forming an important part of the

research paper.

The completed paper, in PDF format, can be

examined at the link below. Comments on this re-

search are welcome.

(

http://image.ohmynews.com/down/etc/1/_316425_

1%5B1%5D.pdf)

Citizen Journalism: Holding

Power to Account

How Life in a Palestinian Refugee

Camp Led Ramzy Baroud to Dedicate

Himself to the Truth

by Ramzy Baroud

I still vividly remember the anger in my

father’s voice as our family of seven gathered to

warm ourselves around a tin pan filled with burning

coal in our house, in a refugee camp, in the Gaza

Strip. That was nearly 20-years-ago, and the camp

was under a cruel Israeli military curfew.

Outside, Israeli army vehicles roamed the

streets of the dreadfully crowded and impoverished

camp. “Those who violate the army’s order and

leave their homes will be killed,” blasted a voice

from the loudspeakers positioned atop one of the

Israeli vehicles. The soldier spoke in broken

Arabic; his threats sounded ominously genuine.

Inside our humble dwelling, a refugee home

that first started as a mud hut, we huddled with in-

describable fear. Many people had died this way.

Some of our neighbors were shot for looking out

their windows. Others were killed inside their

homes. Our house was riddled with bullets. We had

no reason to doubt the Israeli army’s threats. My

Dad instructed us not to breath heavily, not to

sneeze, and not to move for any reason. Even this

could drive a herd of soldiers into our house.

A few hours later when things quieted down,

my Dad, comforted by the fact that the jeeps

seemed to have moved on to another part of the

camp, turned on the radio. He never missed the

BBC Arabic hourly news broadcast, even now.

Palestinians have always had a love-hate rela-

tionship with the media. Knowing that the name of

our refugee camp was uttered on some radio station

thousands of miles away, was in some way a recog-

nition that our plight mattered, even if only a little.

Hate, because this was hardly the case, and even if

some references were made, they barely deviated

from the usual mantras that saw the Israeli occupi-

Page 25

ers as the ultimate source of information, the pri-

mary authority on what had indeed happened.

This remains the case today. What the Israeli

army acknowledges becomes fact, its narrative is

the trusted narrative; what it dismisses, has simply

never happened; at best, it’s a murky Palestinian

allegation.

The BBC radio mentioned nothing of the Is-

raeli curfew imposed on half of the Gaza Strip that

day, nothing of the wanton killings of several peo-

ple. One boy who died that day was a classmate of

mine, shot as we protested against the armed Jew-

ish settlers’ attack on our high school.

The still silence was now coupled with anger.

“No one gives a damn whether we live or die,

slaughtered like sheep and not even a mention on

the news,” my father began his own commentary,

which often followed disappointing news broad-

casts.

Out of this sense of helplessness my insistence

on “getting the word out” was born. It had little to

do with the 1988 U.S. presidential elections, an

event that some argue led to the introduction of the

concept of Citizen Journalism. It also had little to

do with the advent of the Internet, although the lat-

ter has provided a platform for many people of con-

science to disseminate their ideas.

“Getting the word out” or “just telling them the

truth,” as Malcolm X often preached is not inborn

in me, or anyone else for that matter, but it is ne-

cessitated by circumstances: where a narrative is

conveyed by one party, and the other party is

completely excluded. While such an assertion

sounds academic and perhaps a bit redundant, this

kind of neglect is injurious to most of the forgotten

multitudes all around the globe, those whose “side

of the story” is either deemed irrelevant, unimpor-

tant or inconsistent with the mainstream narrative

which has its own intricate checks and balances.

It comes as no surprise that my studies, career

and activism have always remained closely tied to

that notion: I studied, taught and wrote about jour-

nalism for many years. While I began my writing

career at a very young age, as a correspondent for a

few local newspapers in Palestine, my direct in-

volvement in Citizen Journalism didn’t begin until

much later, in the year 2000.

A year earlier, I had embarked on what then

looked more like a personal website, where I would

post my weekly commentaries and the work of a

few others. But the advent of the Palestinian Upris-

ing in September 2000 turned that venture into one

of the most stable and widely read Palestinian on-

line newspapers in the English language. It is called

The Palestine Chronicle.

In record time, The Palestine Chronicle at-

tracted a large number of writers from across the

globe who sought not financial rewards, but a much

needed platform to express their well-stated yet

neglected points of view. Into its seventh year, The

Palestine Chronicle has grown in scope and import,

covering the Iraq war as well as the Arab-Israeli

conflict.

Though no match for the traditional pro-Israeli

media and with no financial backbone whatsoever,

The Palestine Chronicle has made a dent in what

had seemed to be an unwinnable battle for honest

reporting.

The year 2002 witnessed the Israeli reinvasion

of major West Bank population centers, prompting

thousands of peace activists from across the world,

notwithstanding Israel itself, to travel to the West

Bank. Most of these activists hoped to convey the

story beyond the headlines and the forgotten news

segments filed by detached reporters based in

five-star hotels in Tel Aviv. Through The Palestine

Chronicle and other online venues, these activists

were provided with a platform.

For example, Brian Wood – a U.S. based activ-

ist who visited the West Bank during the Israeli

invasion of Jenin in April 2002 – used to sneak into

the Palestinian refugee camp where hundreds of

people were reportedly killed or wounded, call a

friend in Colorado and convey a report regarding

what he saw there over a cell phone. The report

would in turn be sent to me in Seattle; I would edit

and post it, and also send it to a mailing list of

thousands, and eventually to hundreds of thou-

sands.

Using the same style, and following the U.N.

failure to investigate the Israeli killings in Jenin, I

managed to use citizen reporters to put together

what later became an Amazon.com best seller,

Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli

Invasion. The book was the fruit of nearly 30 indi-

viduals; only two were professional journalists. It

was the first, and still the most authoritative re-

sponse to all the allegations made regarding the

two-week long battle in Jenin. The book was used

Page 26

as a source for Middle East studies programs in

various U.S. universities.

Citizen Journalism is not stamp collecting. It’s

true, at times it can be a fun and financially reward-

ing hobby to those willing to hide behind the back-

yard bushes of Hollywood celebrities, ready to snap

the million-dollar photo and sell it to some tabloid.

But in my experience it can be a very useful tool in

confronting authority, revealing atrocities and hold-

ing those in power to account for their deeds.

If Citizen Journalism, using the Internet and

other media, succeeds in penetrating the monopoly

of the corporate media on news (thus narratives and

discourses), participatory democracy, which has

been long circumvented by media deception and

official propaganda, might finally recover some of

its losses.

To achieve that, Citizen Journalism has to

thoroughly analyze what is going wrong in today’s

mainstream media and remain focused on what the

priorities are, what counts and what truly matters.

Ramzy Baroud teaches journalism at Australia’s Curtin University

of Technology, Malaysia Campus. He is the author of “Writings on

the Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle”

(Pluto Press, London), and editor-in-chief of The Palestine Chroni-

cle.

Time to Think

Reflections on the Uses and Abuses of

the Media

by Fiza Fatima Asar

The role of the media has long been under dis-

cussion, usually from two perspectives, one empha-

sizing how it might serve to improve society and

the other discussing the ways the media have been

manipulated by governments and elites in their own

interests. It is unfortunate that the socially positive

role of the media is often superseded by the larger

interests of a national elite, the manipulative role

emerging as the more dominant.

Hitlerian Germany was a prime historical ex-

ample of how governments can employ the media

to influence the mindset of citizens. During the

Cold War, exemplified by “Voice of America,” the

media were once again used to promote the oppos-

ing sides’ ideas. In some cases, as with Nazi Ger-

many, the media may be used directly to market

certain ideals, and in other cases, it is a subtler pro-

cess, in which the viewer/listener is influenced less

directly.

In this context it is interesting to note the

growing attention world governments are paying to

the Arabic language and their willingness to reach

Arabic-speaking audiences. There is a new wave of

Arabic channels being introduced by major powers

around the world.

Russia is in the process of starting an Arabic

channel by the name of “Russia al-Awam,” which

will be aired in all Arabic-speaking countries. In

recent times, Russia has increasingly oriented itself

toward the Middle East. With its softer attitude

than the West’s toward Iran and the Hamas-run

Palestinian government and its observer status in

the Organization of Islamic Countries, Russia can

be seen as playing a strategic game against the

West. It’s a two-way contest, however.

The West is trying to win the hearts and minds

of the Arabic-speaking public as well. As the BBC

World Service extends its Arabic broadcasts, CNN

is monitoring its Arabic website. France, too, is

aiming to broadcast its Arabic channel by 2007, the

year Russia al-Awam will broadcast. Germany’s

channel, Deutsche Welle, is also interested in

broadcasting in Arabic. Denmark and Spain are not

far behind.

It is especially interesting to note this develop-

ment, keeping in mind that these are the very coun-

tries that have seldom had warm relations with

Arab-speaking peoples. There is enough evidence

of this discrepancy in the treatment of the working

class in France, which, not surprisingly, numbers

many immigrants, a large fraction of whom are

Arabic-speaking. This population lives under poor

conditions and suffers increasingly tougher labor

laws.

Denmark is home to the cartoons considered

insulting to Muslims around the world. The nega-

tive reaction of Muslims to the cartoons only en-

couraged other European newspapers to continue

their war on the susceptibilities of Arabs and Mus-

lims in general. Enough has been said about the

“war on terrorism” initiated by the United States

and fostered by its Western allies. To fight “terror-

ism” these countries are committing acts of state

Page 27

terrorism, rounding up and imprisoning Arabs and

Muslims without solid evidence, denying them le-

gal access, sending them to jails like Guantanamo,

and to other forms of maltreatment, as was evident

in the Al-Ghraib torture scandal.

When a contradictory picture like this emerges,

it is difficult not to question how the motives be-

hind it relate to the media. Is it purely a desire to

reach out to wider audiences, or is it a long-term

strategy to win over the Middle East by changing

truth to propaganda?

If one were to begin believing in the idea that

perhaps Western media in the Arabic-speaking

world would be a positive step towards introducing

the idea of democracy, it only takes a little while to

look at the examples of Algeria, Turkey, Pakistan,

Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Hamas-run Palestine, and, in

fact, every other country in the world to see how

and when the West chooses to ignore the demo-

cratic ideal and in fact works against it where dem-

ocratically elected groups are not to the West’s lik-

ing.

These are the very media that showed footage

of Palestinian children rejoicing after the 9/11 at-

tacks without clearly showing whether the footage

was from a prior recording, or whether the children

were not tempted, by candies, perhaps, to act the

part. Western media, attempting to break into the

Arab world, are just a continuing chain of foreign

enterprises, franchises, and companies that exercise

a monopoly against the locals in all parts of the

world. The problem is when we continue to indulge

ourselves in the supposed “benefits” of these insti-

tutions, choosing to ignore the way they add to the

contradictions around us, and the way they maneu-

ver us away from reality.

Perhaps now is the time we must really ques-

tion ourselves – is it permissible then for us to ig-

nore the question of media manipulation and elite

interests? Do we not have a responsibility in this

toward ourselves and others? We may be in a better

world today, when it comes to the opportunities we

have to filter incoming information and make judg-

ments based on our wisdom. In the age of informa-

tion and technology, the twin factors of media and

knowledge have been transformed into newer and

better shapes, so that the role of governmental ma-

nipulation can be, and has been, greatly reduced.

No longer should we, as a global community,

be content to blame our local television, radio, and

print media for the misconceptions and ignorance

we labor under. We have a great responsibility to

ourselves and others to comprehend and promote

the truth. Agreed, technology has reached far and

wide, and the Internet is more widely used than

ever before. Yet, there are still many to whom ac-

cess to technology is still a privilege. It is we who

can employ our resources, use our good senses,

break the ignorance we live in, make wise deci-

sions, and then spread this light among others

through our voice and commitment.

Great Expectations:

A Writer’s Dilemma

When Confronted by an

Emotional Topic, How Does One

Remain Objective?

by Bhumika Ghimire

While doing research on Afghan women for an

Ohmynews article titled Afghan Women: Forgotten

and Betrayed, I had big hopes.

I am the “new kid on the block,” who hopes

for big results for her work, no matter how small

the work is. I had hoped that my article would

spark a debate and make people see the failure of

international intervention in Afghanistan, but noth-

ing happened.

The article was published and after five or six

days everyone forgot about the long suffering

women of Afghanistan. The lack of outrage among

readers made me question my motive. Was I writ-

ing about the women to get results or to just fulfill

my duty? Should I expect results?

I got my answer a month after the article was

published. During a meeting with a local peace

group, someone said that if we just remain specta-

tors we will turn out to be terribly angry people

seeing all the injustice in the world. We have to do

something to make our voices heard, be it in writ-

ing or by public speaking. This is the only way we

can do justice to ourselves and the people around

us.

Page 28

The moment I heard this, I had an epiphany. I

realized that my writing about the lives of Afghan

women was my duty – something I had to do –

whatever the outcome may be. I understood the

futility of my great expectations.

Even though I know what I am supposed to be

doing, I can’t help but hope for results. I don’t

know how seasoned journalists like Ahmed Rashid,

who has been writing on Afghanistan for nearly 25

years, keeps his priorities straight. He has seen

death, destruction, injustice year after year for last

quarter of a century. How can one be objective in

such a situation? If I put myself in his shoes, I can

see that I would have turned into a frustrated luna-

tic unable to handle all the pressures.

I don’t think my expecting results is because of

my being a woman – making me somewhat emo-

tional. When I used to write about Nepal and the

way the Maoists have escaped justice, I knew that

my writing would do nothing to improve the situa-

tion. I continued to write because I could not stop

myself.

I think this is because since I grew up in Nepal,

I know how things work there, so my “Nepali”

gene told me not to dream big. But in the case of

Afghanistan, I don’t have that advantage. I don’t

have the “Afghan” gene in me, so I don’t know

how the people of Afghanistan think. I guess that is

why my inner, inexperienced self took over and

made me hope and dream.

I am ranting about my dilemma because today

I got a message from the Revolutionary Associa-

tion of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which

talks about a report from United Nations Develop-

ment Fund for Women (UNIFEM) which says that

65 percent of the widows in Kabul see suicide as

their only option to escape life’s miseries.

To be a good journalist you have to be objec-

tive. But when you read about situations like the

seven-year-old child being victim of domestic vio-

lence or a little girl being given away in marriage

to a man twice her age, how does one remain ob-

jective? How to shut down your emotions and just

write the news?

I cannot turn myself into a stone and just write

the news. I am outraged by the situation of women

in Afghanistan and yes, I do expect my readers to

feel the same. I know I should not expect dramatic

results, but this is the only way I can keep on writ-

ing.

On Being a Citizen

Journalist

The Greatest Beauty of

Citizen Journalism Is That its Power

Is in Every Citizen’s Hand

by Masimba Biriwasha

Being a citizen journalist has taught me to be

responsible with the power that I have over infor-

mation. I have a powerful understanding of the im-

portance of information in shaping people’s deci-

sions and destinies.

I have a special responsibility to make sure

that the information that I collect is accurate and

truthful before sharing it with other citizens.

It is not the simple desire to see myself in print

that drives me. Rather, it is to see citizens empow-

ered to make independent and wise decisions about

their lives and livelihoods.

I strive to be fair and complete in the stories

that I tell. My aim is always to tell an accurate and

authentic story, one that reflects reality as much as

possible.

I strive to remain independent from the people

and issues that I cover. Obviously, I am deeply

concerned about the issues that I write about. But

my primary motivation is to provide a complete

picture, even if it is not entirely positive. I try to tell

the truth as it is, without embellishments.

As a citizen journalist, I am not a mere con-

veyer of information. I am more that just a cog in

the wheel of information. I am a citizen first, with a

sincere desire to see freedom, fairness and justice

prevail. I have a firm belief that freedom of expres-

sion is fundamental to citizens’ progress, peace,

and prosperity.

I therefore always do original reporting, apply-

ing a keen sense of judgment to information. My

primary allegiance is to the public. I am aware of

my own opinions and biases, and strive to interro-

gate them when I do my reporting.

I make it a point to represent all significant

views in a way that is non-partisan and provides

wholesome information to citizens.

Page 29

I am curious and persistent. I have an in-built

desire to keep going over the edge in search of the

truth. I ask questions – many questions – and never

take no for an answer.

I am not intimidated by the big and powerful in

society. However, I maintain an immense humility

and passion to see the voices of the downtrodden

speaking forcefully about issues that affect their

lives.

My principal obligation is loyalty to citizens

and the truth. I am highly disciplined at verifying

the authenticity of information. And I maintain a

rigorous independence from the characters behind

the stories that I seek to tell.

I believe citizen journalism is an avenue to

challenge dominant views in society. Usually, these

dominant views marginalize the voiceless through

economic and political power as well as access to

the big media.

Every day, I face challenges to compromise

these values but I always fight to keep them at the

front of every story that I tell.

Citizen journalism is in essence supplying citi-

zens with information that they can use to make a

difference in their lives. It is more than just

juggling words to paint a picture. Overall, it is a

painstaking process that involves collecting and

checking facts. And, above all, having the courage

to share a story without fear or favor. The greatest

beauty of citizen journalism is that the center of its

power is in every citizen’s hands.

A key question for me when I compile stories

is always: how will a story help a citizen to be part

of the change that makes our society better and

freer?

OhmyNews Inspires Citizen

Journalism in Indonesia

OMNI Citizen Reporter Launches Panyingkul!

by Lily Yulianti

When I raised the idea of a local citizen jour-

nalism Web site in my home town, Makassar, Indo-

nesia, I received some skeptical responses. People

said that the Internet is still a luxury thing in Indo-

nesia, there are not many people that have adequate

writing skills, and how would I find citizens to ac-

tively and continuously send their report and arti-

cles.

It was in April last year. I was sitting in front

of my computer in Tokyo, imagining a local Web

site run by ordinary citizens, in a city, around 6,000

kilometers away from me. Well, this is the fact: the

number of Internet users in Indonesia is less than

10 percent of the total population. Makassar, my

home town, is located in South Sulawesi Province,

Eastern Indonesia, where the infrastructures lag

behind the major cities in the western part of the

country.

“Let’s test the water. We’ll never find out the

feasibility unless we have a go,” I said to some

close friends last year.

Why did the idea of a local Web site with a

citizen journalism model look so appealing to me?

The fact was, after spending several months writing

for OhmyNews and reading some articles about

reader participation in creating news, I found that

this model channels citizens’ voices and promotes

people’s involvement in the public arena – in an

independent media from the public, for the public.

It was nearly one year ago, when some friends

of mine in Makassar agreed to join a discussion on

citizen journalism and an online workshop to inves-

tigate any possibilities of introducing the new jour-

nalism model to the city. Later we decided to write

several stories about the city square, Karebosi.

Seven citizens came up with various ideas, inspired

by the history, myths, and people of the square, and

we presented the stories on a citizen journalism

Web site called Panyingkul! on July 1, 2006. In

addition, we also wrote book reviews about

Makassar, small bookshops and book-rental or pri-

vate libraries run by local people.

The word “panyingkul” originates from local

languages, and means junction, intersection. We

decided to use the word as we believe that it is

ear-catching, easy to remember, distinctive, and

presents the spirit of an alternative media. With two

editors, one Web designer and Web developer

working on a volunteer basis, we launched a pro-

ject called “Journalism of Ordinary People.” Our

first main stories were the six feature-style articles

about the city square. They were written by seven

writers and on the launching day we declared that

this project would be a monthly Web-magazine.

Page 30

Just a few weeks after the launch, we received

positive responses and also some expectations that

the Web site should be routinely updated. The deci-

sion to provide a monthly magazine was finally

changed. We determined to update the site on a

daily basis, with one article per day. There were 10

citizen reporters who confirmed their commitment

to write for us.

Now, 10 months have passed since we

launched the project. Panyingkul! has published

174 articles mostly written by local citizens in

Makassar and several writers in other cities, and

also Indonesian people living overseas. They are

university students, fiction writers, professional

workers, and housewives, with ages ranged from

20 to 60 years old.

The stories vary from social issues such as

street children, urban poor, traffic jams, education,

public facilities, tourism, marine research, waste

management, environmental issues, economic and

social gaps among districts, women’s empower-

ment, culture, arts, literature, and so on. Some sto-

ries have a distinctive point of view, such as criti-

cism of poor public facilities and city development

policies.

In some cases, the citizens’ solidarity is easily

channeled throughout Panyingkul! For example

there was a collection of donations for a

60-year-old rickshaw driver who was stabbed by

his friend. A citizen reporter wrote the profile of

the rickshaw driver for Panyingkul!, explaining that

he has to work as a cleaner at a university in the

morning and also work as a rickshaw driver in the

afternoon, in order to meet his family’s daily needs.

When the citizen reporter wrote about the acci-

dent, other citizen reporters collected donations and

also gave away their payments. (Note: Panyingkul!

pays a small fee, around US$10 per article.)

When torrential rains and a storm destroyed a

home-schooling program for poor children in

Makassar early in January, again the citizen report-

ers collected donations for repairing the building,

after a citizen reporter wrote about the incident.

Today I would like to share my story on behalf

of around 40 citizen reporters in Panyingkul! who

have shown their commitment to the spirit of par-

ticipatory journalism introduced by OhmyNews:

every citizen is a reporter. I do believe that there

are a lot of unexpected possibilities in engaging

with this citizen journalism project. Not only have

we now started an initiative to channel citizens’

voices, but we have also started to re-write stories

and histories of the city, based on ordinary people’s

perspectives, and we are maintaining our solidarity,

concern, and passion to share our stories.

Of course hurdles still remain, along with the

debate among the opponents and supporters of this

new model of journalism. In Makassar, most citi-

zen reporters have to go to Internet cafes to get

connected. They have to pay 3.000 - 6.000 rupiahs

(around 75 cents) per hour for the Internet connec-

tion. Sometimes they have to anticipate blackouts,

when the electricity is sometimes temporarily cut

off.

But no matter what, now we believe that ordi-

nary people have their own power to spread the

information, and to share their stories and views.

As a citizen reporter, Luna Vidya says: “I have

been questioning my identity as a citizen, as well as

many things that I have seen and witnessed in the

city and other places. Now I believe that I can share

my views through my writings.”

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben

(1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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