Journalism Blog

Oh Yeon-ho, founder and CEO of OhmyNews has created a forum for the people to write and be heard and an ever more amazing resource for the public to consume a diverse variety of news.

With over 60,000 correspondents worldwide and over 700,000 visitors to the site everyday, OhmyNews has proved a powerful competitor to the mainstream news providers and become a significant influence when it comes to reporting the news to the public.

By placing the power of storytelling into the hands of the people the news directly affects, an incredible scope of information is the result.

Each citizen who wishes to be a part of OhmyNews must agree to abide by a set of ethical guidelines and a reporters agreement, much the same as a highly educated professional journalist would when reporting for a mainstream newspaper or news program.

We place our trust in these reporters to go about obtaining the news according to these guidelines, to put the trust in our own hands only seems logical.

People have caught on to the advantages of a site like Ohmynews and are making the push for a mainstream citizen jounalism site for Australins, however there are those who share the attitude that ‘Citizen Journalism Sucks’ James Farmer writes in The Age Blogs 2005.

Personally I think if Australia followed in the footsteps of South Korea and allowed citizen jounalism to become a predominatnt source of news, like OhmyNews, we as the public would all recive a variety of unbias perspectives making our understanding of the news full.

Allowing us to form our own outside opinions, rather than having them carefully managed, controlled and fed to us by the powerful men in suits.

DOWN WITH GATEKEEPING!

A question which has baffled me for some time is: How is money made from free content on the web? I asked a friend who seemed infinantly more wise than I and he said, “When a site gets popular people pay you money to advertise on the spot.”

As Wilson states in his article, ‘Make Money around free content’, there are several ways to make a dollar from free content. So, using this logic the more people looking at your site, the more companies will pay to gain the attention of those viewers.

Well if that’s the case it doesn’t seem fair that the money is mostly made from advertising and not from the content itself.

For example, The Age allows people to read the news online for free, because adverts like American Express pay them to use that space, so thats how they make money.

So as a result less and less people purchase their newspapers. Surely this would affect The Ages intake, or does a newspaper itself make more money from the hundreds of advertisements scattered throughout the pages than the $2.40 you pay for your Saturday paper?

Chris Anderson makes an interesting reference to King Gillette, in his article, “Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business”, commenting on the way in which Gillette made his millions with the ‘freebie’ campaign, making reference to the change in how we use “free”, not just a advertising gimic but as a form of economics in business.

As our population continues to grow alongside a relentless media revolution, we begin to take notice of the changes in our media consumption.

According to the Pew Center in the United States in mid 2005 approximately 8 million Americans had created blogs and up to 32 million were reading them.

Larger scale news bureaus such as the BBC have experimented with mo-blogs increasing news coverage making it a never ending source.

As more people look to alternative sources of news such as blogs, our newspapers and free-to-air television ciculation suffers as a result.

To discuss a relevant example, Channel 7 have blog archives covering the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Also the site displays V-logs direct from Beijing, allowing people to pick and choose when and what news they consume.

The problem I find with the incomprehensible development of media coverage, is how can we be sure that what we are reading is true? When we read a reputable newspaper we are assured coverage is reliable, sources are credible and respectable journalists maintain ethical guidelines whist gathering our news.

It all comes down to the freedom of choice, If we care how we get our news.

Do we mind reading something that could have been obtained in a way in which may be unethical in our eyes? Or do we read cautiously paying close attention to the familier elements we associate with the truth?

This blog covers the ‘Why’ and the ‘How” of media convergence, regarding important factors involving society, technology, legality and our leap into the 21st Century.

Being part of today’s generation, a generation that change has been thrust upon constantly, media convergence hardly seems an issue.

Perhaps our generation has become desensitised to change. In a world now where change has become more of an expectation than a surprise, a day we can remember is no longer a day we long for

As we speed through the 21st century and gradually loose the concept of ’spare time’, we can anticipate what impact that media convergence will have on our lives, business and the practice of journalism.

The time-poor suburban dweller. A coffee drinking, rushing our the door, picking up the kids, dropping off the costumes, studying, working, eating, missing the tram, catching the train modern day member of society, finding time to sit down and flip through the pages of The Sunday Age? So, we set out to find ways in which will make our lives just that little bit easier.

Convenience. We as consumers demand convenience, and as we discuss media convergence we are hand fed our news and current affairs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a satisfying, easily digestable forum. The Internet.

So, is media convergence a problem? Not for consumers. They will benefit as the ‘on-line’ industry grows.

The speedy, low cost, reliable news source that fits in with the busy lives of today’s consumers. A problem for the practice of journalism? Perhaps, they will suffer as a result of media convergence. However times do change, and change does affects things.

So, instead of trying to stop the change, embrace it and look for an outlet in which the skills of a journalist can be utilised in this new forum.

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