"Ohmynews targets Europe"

Korea’s citizen journalism news site Ohmynews is planning to launch “Ohmynews Europe”, reported the Telegraph in its online edition on December 21. If the plan comes true, the European version will be Ohmynews’s third overseas branch following Ohmynews International, based in the US, and Ohmynews Japan.
The story entitled “South Korean news pioneer targets Europe” seems Telegraph’s exclusive. No Korean medium has reported about the company’s plan to enter the European market.

Telegraph quoted Mr. Oh: “I hope I can keep introducing our model to other countries including Europe, North America and hopefully North Korea in the future. Why not? Actually, we are in talks with a European partner to launch an OhmyNews site in Europe." (The Telegraph writer made a mistake by calling Oh Yeon Ho, the founder of Ohmynews, Mr. Ho instead of Mr. Oh. She must be unfamiliar with Korean family names that come first, not last.)

According to the story, Mr. Oh did not reveal any timetable for the launch in Europe nor the partner that he is talking with. The plan may be too premature to discuss openly. It can be one of the ideas he is playing with for a long-term strategy. However, it can be clearly said that he is not discouraged at all by the criticisms over the news site’s performance both in Korea and overseas.

Mr. Oh strongly refuted the criticism that Ohmynews Japan has failed in mobilizing Japanese citizens: “I believe OhmyNews Japan, with more than 4,000 active citizen reporters as of today, has succeeded in introducing the citizen journalism model to Japanese society." He also defended his company’s financial loss in 2006 saying that Korea's advertising market - which accounts for 60pc of the group's revenue - was wallowing in the doldrums and Ohmynews invested heavily in the site's redevelopment.

Actually, Ohmynews has vigorously invested in various projects, the two most prominent items of which are establishing the Citizen Journalism School, a institution for training citizen reporters, and opening the “Ohmynews E” site, one of Ohmynews Korea’s new services.

Citizen Journalism School that opened November 24 is located in a rural town about 90 minutes by car away from Seoul. Mr. Oh invested $400,000 in refurbishing an elementary school building having been abandoned for more than 10 years into a journalism education center. Facilities will include three classrooms large enough to accommodate 100 students simultaneously and in-school lodging and dining capacity for 50 guests, complete with broadband Internet access and blanket Wi-Fi coverage. It also has a mid-size recreation area and room for other outdoor sports activities.

The education program will include journalism 101 classes for citizen reporters, writing workshops for new citizen reporters, and digital camera class customized for photo journalism and video news gathering. The faculty will be composed of professional journalists from print, radio and television news and senior OhmyNews citizen reporters, with additional teaching staff with a variety of expertise and colorful professional backgrounds.

As of September 1, 2007, Ohmynews announced another motto of “Every citizen is an editor” and began an experiment of opening up news editing function to the users. It created a new page entitled “Ohmynews E” – “E” stands for “Editor” – which contains a list of stories, comments and photos contributed by the users. Those who are not a citizen reporter can also contribute to this page. The List is initially edited by the newsroom editors but keeps changing according to the points given by the readers to each piece. The higher points an article receives, the better place on the list it goes to.

It is clear that Ohmynews has lost much of its popularity among Korean netizens over the past five years. The news site could not play such a crucial role in the last week’s presidential election that the conservative candidate, Lee Myung Bak, won as it did five years ago. But, taking the recent active investments into consideration, it is too early to evaluate its performance both as a news organization and a business model.