Korean online newspaper enlists army of 'citizen reporters'/Multitudes log on daily to read and respond to stories
OhmyNews is much more than a soapbox, though. It is a cross between an online news site and a sophisticated blog. Koreans flock to it. The site gets 1.7 million to 2 million page views each day, a number that shot up to 25 million during the December 2002 presidential election. [...]
The privately held Web site has been profitable since September 2003 and is projected to pull in $10 million this year, [Jean Min, director of the international news division] said. By contrast, Salon.com in San Francisco pulled in $6.6 million in fiscal year 2005 and had 1.1 million average daily page views in July, according to market research firm comScore Media Metrix. The DailyKos, a popular liberal blog written in Emeryville, had 96,774 average daily page views, and conservative blog Instapundit had 32,258 in July.
The success of OhmyNews can be attributed in part to the high level of public engagement in this heavily wired, young democracy, where less than two decades have passed since military rule ended. Street protests are common, and citizens are eager to speak out online.
With the motto "every citizen is a reporter," 5-year-old OhmyNews has engaged its audience in ways that U.S. print and television news outlets, faced with a steep decline in readers and viewers, only dream of.
