Via: Tapas Ray

> It would seem more important to encourage comments and discussion on
> the articles, rather than votes for what page something goes on.

...

> OhmyNews ... also welcomes submissions from citizen reporters.


Discussion is definitely important, but I think it is equally important to have
stories from citizen reporters, because this implies at least a partial
dismantling of the traditional media's near-monopoly on agenda setting, which
Heiko was referring to. I would argue that this is where OhmyNews scores. The
founder, Oh Yeonho, talks about discursive power in an article
(http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=8&no=201423&rel_no=1)
-

"Each political scholar has his own definition of power. I would say power comes
from established standards. Those who have power set the standards, and in this
way are able to maintain their power.

In the media market, too, they say "this is the standard, follow me." The
standards of 20th century journalism have been created and controlled by
professional newspaper journalists.

But these standards are challenged by new Internet journalists: the netizens or
citizen reporters.

They challenge the traditional media logic of who is a reporter, what is news,
what is the best news style, and what is newsworthy."

After seeing the Indian print media from the inside for 17 years, I find the Oh
Mynews model of journalism very inspiring and my forthcoming book on online
journalism (Cambridge University Press, India, Foundation Books imprint) has quite
a bit of discussion on OhmyNews.

The system of compensating citizen reporters is a matter of detail. OhmyNews has
established one particular model, but I'm sure others will try out other models.

Tapas

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