Oh My!

At the beginning of the month OhmyNews International announced that from September it would be shifting its focus from that of a participatory based news site to a blog based format commenting on the world of citizen journalism itself.

OhmyNews International (or OMNI) is an offshoot of OhmyNews, a South Korean citizen journalism website founded in 2000 by Oh Yeon-ho, a South Korean journalist. Ohmy's citizen based format is generally considered to be the first of its kind in Korea and the site has played an influential role in Korean politics and society since its inception. In 2002 for example, Ohmy was one of the driving forces behind the election of reformist president Roh Moo-hyun (such was their influence that upon coming to power Roh granted Ohmy his first interview). The establishment of OMNI in 2004 was an attempt to expand upon that initial success in a more far reaching arena.

However, the new direction taken by OMNI can be read in two ways. On the one hand it could be seen as evidence of the limitations of the myriad of citizen based journalism sites currently in existence. 'Old' or 'Sticky Media' journalists never tire of lamenting the failure of users of participatory media sites like Ohmy to sufficiently 'bear witness' to the events which they are reporting, a valid concern and one apparently acknowledged by OMNI in the statement posted on the site. According to OMNI the vast and varied array of content received led to editing difficulties. "With stories coming from places like Afghanistan, Brazil, Zimbabwe and everywhere in-between, it was impossible for our editors to accurately check each story".

On the other hand though, the move can be seen as an exciting new development in the world of participatory media. OMNI claims that the new site will be an attempt to "highlight the most important events and stories in the citizen journalism world...(to) work with our citizen reporters all over the globe to do original reporting about the citizen journalism happening everywhere...(and to) commission critical essays on where citizen media is headed".

Personally, I tend to lean toward the latter view. In its new format OMNI has the potential to act simultaneously as a kind of citizen journalism watch dog and facilitator, a move that could eventually lead to a solution to the problems so often raised by mainstream media. Whether or not OMNI can pull this off is another question all together (one only needs to look as far as the spectacular failure of Ohmy News Japan to see just how wrong these things can go).

In any case OMNI's upcoming transformation signals an interesting new development in the way people approach citizen journalism and is a perfect jumping off point for this blog!