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South Korea: Voice of the People, OhmyNews.com Financial Loss

by sara star | July 11, 2009 at 02:04 pm

104 views | 20 Recommendations | 4 comments

Participatory Journalism, which includes citizen journalism has gained popularity across the globe, including South Korea when they launched OhmyNews.com in 2000. However in the past year it has suffered financially, due to less advertising dollars available, and is asking for public assistance.

Launched in 2000, two years before the Presidential election, OhmyNews quickly rose to prominence by providing a voice for young online readers and mostly liberal political groups. The site has been largely credited for the successful campaign of the reformist president Roh Moo-hyun.

Roh killed himself last May in a shocking move that surprised his supporters and political adversaries alike. He had to endure mounting pressure from his opponents, while the Korean attorney's office grilled him with a highly controversial investigation on his alleged slush fund scandal.

OhmyNews has gradually lost its standing for the past couple of years, however, as competing citizen media platforms started to attract its core young Korean readers. The recent global financial meltdown was another blow to its shaky financial structure.

Despite its dwindling status, OhmyNews still enjoys strong influence among young Korean readers.

Participatory journalism works when not influenced by corporations, government, or religious groups. But then the question remains.. where do the funds come from then?

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158

at 14:41 on July 11th, 2009

Good report,

thanks.

albertacowpoke

at 18:35 on July 11th, 2009

That's a good question Sara. Thank you for this?

Paschen

at 18:47 on July 11th, 2009

We had a post out on this earlier.

Would be nice to have a link to it.

It is an important question and one that has been asked long before this happened.

Keep in mind that ohmyNews was one of the first and most successful news sites, South Korean are more involved in this sort of participation of CJ work then most around the globe and have known some major back slashes such as court cases against some of their CJ writers.

ohmyNews does also operate in several languishes. And it does remunerate some postings that exceed the 1000 views.