OhmyNews: Schwächelt der Bürger-Journalismus?

--- Die LA Times widmet sich dem Modell Citizen Journalism am bekannten Beispiel OhmyNews in Südkorea, das ja Vorbild etwa für die Readers Edition der Netzeiung oder Wikinews war (von denen man nicht so viel hört), und arbeitet dabei auch einige Schattenseiten des Bürger-Journalismus heraus:

Although traditional newspapers and magazines around the world are cutting jobs amid declining circulation and a shift toward the Internet, OhmyNews continues to recruit. It currently has a reporting corps of 50,000. The company's motto, posted outside its crammed office in central Seoul, is a big help-wanted sign: "Every citizen can be a reporter." The experiment has been lauded by the Economist and other publications. OhmyNews' founder and chief executive, Oh Yeon-ho, a onetime writer for a dissident magazine, has traveled the globe extolling the virtues of "participatory citizens' journalism" and offering a new business model for a struggling industry. "I find some universal applicability in the OhmyNews model," says the wiry 42-year-old. But as the news service has matured, a bit of the sheen has worn off. The headline on OhmyNews' story could be "Business Is Depressed, Readership Is Down and Backers Are Worried." After making a big splash during South Korea's 2002 presidential elections, the company lost money last year on revenue of about $6 million, most of it from ads. Its readership, as measured by page views on the Internet, has fallen to about 1.5 million a day, from a peak of 20 million five years ago. Last summer OhmyNews expanded into Japan, with $11 million of financing from Tokyo-based investment giant Softbank Corp., but neither that site nor the English-language international site has come close to matching OhmyNews' performance in South Korea. "My personal feeling is the future is not bright," says Yoon Young-chul, a journalism professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. "Its impact has been decreased." In some ways, OhmyNews is a victim of its own success. It was a pioneer of citizen journalism, but its ideas of engaging readers, particularly younger ones, have been co-opted by rival news purveyors in South Korea and all the way to CNN and the BBC. Mainstream media websites, including that of the Los Angeles Times, now post videos, photos and comments from the public. But OhmyNews has encountered other problems. It has faced questions of credibility, partly because of its liberal bent and its army of nonprofessional reporters. In one instance, an advertising agent and citizen reporter wrote a story promoting a company that, it was later discovered, was one of his clients, prompting Oh to issue a public apology. Oh declined to comment about that incident, but in an e-mail reply he said citizen reporters were required to reveal their association with clients. Reporters must also use their real names on stories and promise to abide by an ethics code similar to those of other news-gathering organizations. Thus far, the company says, only a few stories written by citizen reporters have been involved in legal disputes. ... To broaden its appeal, though, OhmyNews is devoting more resources to reporting on the economy and other topics. Oh is offering Journalism 101 classes to citizen reporters and trying to improve collaboration between the company's amateurs and professionals. OhmyNews has created a "panic button" online that citizen reporters can tap to talk with editors about what's happened to their stories. About 30% of submissions are rejected. ... Citizen reporters can't make a living working for OhmyNews. The company pays no more than $22 per submission, though readers can contribute as much as $54 at a time for a story they like through a tip-jar system, a la PayPal. Kim Young-oak, a Harvard-trained classics scholar, holds the record: More than $30,000 poured in after he wrote an article questioning the logic and wisdom of moving the nation's capital outside Seoul.

Passend dazu: Die USA suchen nach einer Definition für Journalisten und die damit einhergehenden Rechte: "Freier Fluss der Informationen" droht der US-Regierung zu breit zu werden. Der demokratische Repräsentantenhaus-Abgeordnete Frederick Boucher hat mit dem Free Flow Information Act of 2007 einen Gesetzesentwurf vorgelegt, der dem US-Justizministerium in seiner derzeitigen Fassung zu weit geht. Mit dem Gesetz sollen Journalisten davor bewahrt werden, Ermittlungsbehörden ihre Informanten preiszugeben, um den "freien Fluss der Informationen" zu gewährleisten. Ausnahmen gelten beispielsweise bei "Gefahren für die nationale Sicherheit". ... An diesem Punkt überlappen die Argumente mit einigen, die in der Diskussion für und wider "Bürgerjournalismus" vorgeführt werden. Auch jener, der nicht dafür bezahlt werde, der Öffentlichkeit aber wichtige Informationen überbringe, betätige sich als Journalist. Insofern müssten auch Blogger unter das Gesetz fallen, meinen Befürworter von Bouchers Entwurf..

Ein recht dreister Media-Hack: Als das böhmische Riesengebirge am gestrigen Sonntagmorgen inmitten einer Atombombenexplosion verging, dürfte einigen Zuschauern des tschechischen Frühstücksfernsehens im öffentlich rechtlichen Sender CT2 wohl das Brötchen im Halse stecken geblieben sein. Glücklicherweise stellte sich das Ganze als Fälschung der Künstlergruppe Ztohoven heraus. Die hatten sich über das Internet in eine Kamera respektive einen Kameraserver gehackt, der im Rahmen des frühmorgendlichen Panoramafernsehens Bilder des Riesengebirges lieferte. Ausschnitte bei YouTube.

Auch das noch: Das ultimative Überwachungstool für Netzwerke. Strategen der US-Luftwaffe entwickelten ein wahrhaft futuristisches Konzept eines "Cyber-Fahrzeugs", um im virtuellen Medium ebenso präsent zu sein wie in der Luft, auf dem Boden, auf See oder im Weltraum.

Lobbying the "Googley Way": Google sucht offene Lobbying-Strategie und hat dazu ein "Public Policy Blog" ins Leben gerufen.