Blog 4 (Week 5)

South Korea’s fame was once associated with the 1988 Olympic Games.  But more recently, the country is known for being a world leader in digital technology.

With three out of four households connected to the internet, it has the highest number of broadband connections per capita world-wide.

So, it’s not surprising that one of the nation’s most popular on-line news websites, Ohmynews, attracts 700,000 repeat visitors per day.

What is surprising though, is that the website’s content is mostly supplied by citizens.

The stories seem well-structured, follow journalistic rules, and make good use of multi-media, but that may have something to do with qualified journalists running the show.

Watch the video below to understand the concept of citizen journalism.

 I decided to investigate citizen journalism beyond the cyber walls of Ohmynews, and firstly stubbled across a blog from James Farmer, a journalist from The Age. 

He blatantly despises amateurs being called journalists, and has some valid points with his criticisms. 

Why should amateurs share a professional title that us ‘true’ journalists have studied hard to obtain?

I have no problems with citizens supplying content, and in many cases, providing leads that journalists most probably would not have gathered.  But I do feel that citizens, who supply content for news stories, need another title.

An interesting video by Broadcast journalist Dave Heathfield, ‘Reporting on citizen journalism at war’, shows the rise in citizen journalism on the Iraq war.

Something else that bugs me about citizen reporting is the knowledge that is needed to get the best out of a story.

Do these so called journalists follow rules, values and ethics and know how to ask the right questions under a time-constrained interview? 

Do citizens know how to ‘break the ice’ and get on the right-side of their interviewee prior to asking the ‘hard’ questions?

Are the stories these journalists submitting balanced?

I don’t mean to sound scorned, but I do think it boils down to this.  Citizens get some material to construct a story, but a well trained journalist gets all the material to produce something better.

Without the reliance of qualified journalists and editors, these citizen reporters would get no-where.

Here’s another article I found interesting. Inside information vs outside perspective.