Citizen Media – Citizen Journalists

Richard Edelman, President and CEO of Edelman PR and co-author of their company’s blog Speak Up, wrote an interesting article about the recent movements in the news company OhmyNews in Korea.

The paper receives 200 stories a day from these volunteers. Much of the professional staff time is spent on editing and fact checking these stories before they are posted. In fact 70% of the stories submitted are accepted for publication. The citizen reporters must be verified through government registration numbers, and then sign onto a strict code of ethics including a promise not to write a story for personal financial gain and to tell the truth in each piece.

OhmyNews has embraced the philosophy that every citizen can be a reporter.

I suggest to read the full article as it appears to be a prototype for a new form of media awareness and the use of traditional media. Especially the Mainstream-Media (MSM) would like to learn from this role model which is nothing else but combining forces of professional journalists and their volunteering counterpart. But as these are still professional authors, it reflects nothing else but the current problems of the Blogosphere in which journalists fight bloggers and criticize them at all costs to protect themselves and the MSM. Perhaps the MSM needs to rethink more and more… and revise their processes to include this volunteer work of free authors and blog authors, too.