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The shattering of the myth of Ohmynews

I had just returned from Seoul international woman congress which was coincided with Ohmynews international citizen reporter conference. As Ohmynews is considered as the best model for alternative internet media and inmedia has been borrowing its concept of citizen reporters from the start, I seized the chance of my one week stay to attend a major session of the conference and do some interviews with media activists on the development of alternative media in Seoul. Unexpectedly, within the week, many of my friends were saying that Ohmynews is not alternative media, but mainstream media in the internet space.

As I had to present in the Woman congress, I did not attend Ohmynews’ first two days schedule, but managed to join the international seminar. The meeting took place in Seoul World Exhibition Center, and was sponsored by multinational corporations like Samsung, S.K, L.G and 7 other local big corporate.

The rise of Ohmynews was initially a significant part of the citizen movement, it integrated the role of “reporter” with “citizen” and created a brand new subjectivity. However, the conference did not touch upon any agenda concerning the connection between citizen movement and media; it depoliticized Ohmynews by treating its experience a successful business model.

The first session of the seminar is entitled as “Business perspective”, speakers including the founder of Wikinews Erik Moller and the chief of international department Jean Min. It seems to me that Erik intentionally neglected the theme of his session: after he introduced the experience of Wikinews, he emphasized that internet media should not run according to business principles, instead, they should support each other by sharing technical knowledge, information and resources. He wished that Ohmynews could encourage their citizen reporters to adopt creative commons license. His humble wish is in fact a very strong criticism of Ohmynews existing practice. Citizen reporters has no employment relation with Ohmynews, however, their writings in Ohmynews become the company’s property (Ohmynews holds their copyrights).

During the tea break, I chatted with Erik Moller, he told me that he would like to persuade Ohmynews to adopt creative commons license. He wished that Ohmynews could give up its authoritative style and help facilitating an independent international citizen reporter network. When I introduced InMediaHK’s experience to him, his very first question was whether it was a business or non-profit in nature. I told him that all our editors and writers were volunteers, he was relieved.

Jean Min’s presentation was mainly about the reason for Ohmynews’ success, such as 80% board band penetration rate and a distinctive political environment; however, his conclusion about going international was out of the track of his own reasoning. According to Mr. Min, the vision of Ohmynews was to have millions of citizen reporters all around the world! I think the international citizen reporters in Ohmynews’s conference had already given their answers to Ohmynews: during the conference, Ohmynews had placed more than 20 notebook computers around the hall, but there were very few reports on the conference. The answer is simple, why should we volunteer for a multinational company?

The second session is the so-called academic perspective, speakers including the founder of MyMissourian.com, Clyde Bentley, Neil Thurman, a lecturer in London City University and Jeremy Iggers who is in the process of pushing through a project called “The Twin Cities Daily Planet” in Minneapolis. There were nothing new in the presentations, the only point that I took was that Ohmynews had inspired some westerners’ mind: Jeremy Iggers’ flatter on Ohmynews’ success had managed to win a lot of claps in the boring conference hall.

A citizen reporter from U.S asked the Chair of this session Yoon Young Cheol (one of the brains behind Ohmynews) how Ohmynews, as a socially responsible media, could retain its independent when it was run according to a low cost business model? His question was put aside without any explanation.

The third session is on Asian perspective, speakers including the founder of Japanese version of Ohmynews (Jan Jan), Ken Tekeuchi, a representative, Shintaro Tabata, from a Japanese commercial website (Livedoor) and a Taiwanese citizen reporter, Hsu Chia-hao. The story line went like this: Ken Takeuchi was a retired reporter inspired by Ohmynews and started Jan Jan in 2003. He had invested a lot of manpower and money, but there were little return. His conclusion was that Japanese, especially Japanese youth, were in lack of social and national concern, they were too obsessed with anonymous discussion in BBS; Shintaro Tabata presented a very successful business model of a blog hosting company. The Taiwan presentation was totally messy; he did not even mention the experience of twblog and twimc. And his conclusion was that Taiwan is underdeveloped in internet media and there will be a lot of business opportunities in the future! The three speakers: an old man stubbornly grasping an enlightening media, a successful businessman on new internet media and a youngster full of business hope, constituted the structure of the historical triumph of internet business world.

(Ohmynews series #1. The original version of this post is written in Chinese at InMediaHK 27, june, 2005)

posted by 阿藹 @ 7/31/2005 10:57:00 AM