ALJ301

OHMYNEWS

Koreas leading form of internet based new developed by Oh Yeon-ho in the early 2000’s. With 67% (33 million) of Korea’s population currently using the internet there is a wonderful base for news and views on the internet to be consumed en mass. With South Korea having has the world’s highest number of broadband connections per capita and with, I assume the most comprehensive and complete service available the idea that the worlds best online news source comes from Korea is not hard to believe. It is a distant relative to the pitiful internet services we are provided with in Australia.

Oh my news is ahead of its time in many areas. Oh Yeon-ho- came up with the idea that every person can be a journalist, this is now copied all over the world by almost every media organisation.

At the time of its origin Korea had strict media laws limiting personal opinions etc. After various revolutions Oh developed ohmynews with great success and it is now supported by nearly 70% of the population.

Oh Yeon-ho- rivals Rupert Murdoch, and can claim to be the founder of modern journalism and a dependence on the internet for news, whether it is good or bad is irrelevant.

Oh seems to have every angle covered, advertising, content, civilian reporters, feedback, advertising, editing and I would assume a huge level of censorship, imagine the crap that would get sent in from the millions that view and would have an idea to contribute!!

Question is why has this not transported in western culture on such a scale, there are obvious roadblocks in the quality and availability of the net to western countries particularly Australia. Another reason is eastern countries seem to follow the leader much more than western countries where free speech is much more liberally applied

The other question that comes to mind is the presence of competition. It appears that while there are rules on limiting media ownership, if of 70% of all people in korea are following ohmynews. How is this not a monopoly of media control and ownership?

But the best point from this weeks reading is the way journalism is being taught all over the world. With the seismic shift from print to online media, theory is becoming increasingly old and stale, I know! Every tertiary education institution has to update, and begin teaching what are becoming the worlds leading forms of media.

Wonderful point something for us all to think about:

Traditional media were (is) “really in trouble,” Min said. “It’s a critical time.” Many senior English-language journalists in Seoul confirmed that journalism education in South Korea was too theoretical. Students graduated without experience of a newsroom or evidence of having done journalism (usually demonstrated through clippings of published stories). The demand for jobs among recent graduates far exceeded the number, so newspapers could pick and choose. They usually based selection on grades rather than practical experience.

http://english.ohmynews.com

Advertising on the internet is painful!

I can’t think of anything worse, i hate it, not being one to purchase much if anything over the internet it is of no real use to me.

I think that online advertising is still a long way behind conventional advertising; this is perfectly demonstrated by internet providers still doing the majority of their advertising on TV or in newspapers.

Until the internet providers begin advertising on the net i can’t see it really developing into a conventional form of advertising. The internet is too full of crap and non useful advertising for it to be ever taken seriously among advertising agencies, spam has ruined it for everyone, to begin advertising on the internet as a major venture would be silly for a major company, people and spam filters will just delete the messages before they are read or will just ignore them.

The only way forward is to eliminate the crap! Then perhaps internet advertising can move forward, unlikely though it may be.  

The shift of people to online media coverage has made everyone able to contribute to news broadcasting. While i believe this is a result more of the improving technology of hand held devices rather than the increase of people’s interest in news, it makes for interesting viewing.

The initial impact of news services asking for the general public to contribute will be the immediate decrease in personal privacy. With everyone now able to tell basically the whole world, why would anyone of note (celebrities etc) do anything at all in open air so to speak. A perfect example is Shane Warne being set up by the Daily Mirror newspaper with two women who invited him back to their house with a camera waiting. It is only a matter of time until here in Australia a high profile footballer is caught with or using drugs.  As well as this invasion of privacy the quality of news reporting will drop significantly, how can a person truly authenticate the vision they are sending into a TV station. I can see networks stopping the general public’s participation because of spam news that is being sent in with an eye to 15 minutes of fame!

The main positive though i can see is the instant live feed of an event occurring. The Collingwood footballer’s debacle of this week shows that newspapers and TV stations move slowly. News broke of further developments after 6pm so TV stations realistically had to wait until the next day to confirm the news, while if the news had come any later newspapers would have had to wait two days to release the correct information to the public.

I think that the general public controlling the news is not the future of journalism, there are too many avenues for people to mislead and lie there way onto TV.

The first of my blogs will cover convergence. Or from what i can gather the coming together of different forms of media to inform the general public in an area, like a city.

Firstly according to studies in ALJ301, the newspaper will soon be a median of the past. By 2010 it will be a “niche” form of information for those who choose to read them. Statistics do support this, but i am not convinced that this is the case. While numbers are not rising in daily circulations they are not dwindling away as some may suggest. The obvious counter is the rise and rise of internet news and its becoming more and more available everyday. This is where the convergence of media is playing its part.

Having access to news from many different sources could be a waste of time if they are all saying the same thing. If one media organisation eg: Newscorp owns 80% of the media in a city then we are unlikely to hear any bad news regarding any of Mr Murdoch’s billions of dollars wrapped up in millions of companies. This is where individual newspapers will thrive, in telling the real news and not sugar coating it to keep the boss happy.    

Until recently in Australia owning a TV license and a newspaper in the one Australian city has not been allowed. Much to the dismay of media moguls Packer and Murdoch, but with recent law changes and rules relaxed papers and TV stations are allowed to combine, and with this comes great power and while it may mean more coverage, i think it will only mean more quantity but far less quality!