1, 09. 2007
The online newspaper “OhmyNews” drew much public attention when it started in Japan in late August 2006 as it was a new type of website that provided the opportunity to write articles to “every citizen as a reporter”only if he/she was registered for it. Of late, however, it is not so much “celebrated” as when it was first introduced, and its PV (page view) is fluctuating at low levels. In South Korea, where it first started, the newspaper is said to have fallen into the red. What has become of it?
As reported earlier by J-CAST News, the online news paper was in the center of attention whether or not the editors wanted as it reported about the blogs that came under the fire of criticisms while they were still in the preparatory stage in late August, while it also published an article about a self-acting by 2channelers immediately after their opening on August 28.
15 Million PV per Month Had Been Targeted at
How is OhmyNews after system change?
A symposium was conducted in early September, attended by those including Shuntaro Torigoe, Editor-in-Chief of OhmyNews Japan; staff of the newspaper and bloggers to discuss “how a citizen journalist should be”. Hideki Hirano, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper, said confidently at the symposium the newspaper was targeting at gaining “15 million page view per month within this year”.
Two months have passed since then, and the newspaper is now rarely talked about on the internet. The dwindling popularity is shown by the fluctuation of the access amount to OhmyNews. A band graph of the access to the newspaper, made on the Alexa website that keeps track of the traffic on the internet, shows a peak shooting out in late August when the newspaper started. The access dropped sharply immediately after that and then continued with slight declines or on the same levels. Currently, the “height” of the graph is one eighth to one ninth of that when it started. According to the person in charge of the public relations at OhmyNews, the PV at present is 200,000 per day.
In South Korea, where the OhmyNews originated, the corresponding access trend has continued to decline since 2004, according to Alexa. The access amount is a little shy of double that in Japan. The U.S. Business Week magazine reported on its Nov. 1 issue that OhmyNews, South Korea might fall into the red this year.
In the meantime, OhmyNews has made a major system change. As of the noon of Nov. 17, the newspaper had abolished the “opinion members” who had not been permitted to write news stories but had been able to express their opinions by contributions their pieces only to the comment columns. The newspaper had two types of writer groups. The one is the “citizen reporters” required to register their names, addresses and bank account numbers with the newspaper. The other one was the “opinion members” who did not have to register their bank account numbers. The change was made because the opinions expressed on the comment columns tended to become disorderly as the “opinion members” enjoyed their stronger anonymity than the “citizen writers”. Disputes arose on the columns among the opinion members when the decision was being taken. The editorial department made the final decision unilaterally, however, on the ground that “an agreement could not be reached”, facing criticisms. Toshihisa Sasaki, journalist and editor of the newspaper, wrote a long article on the CNET blog, criticizing the process of taking the decision.
Only About 400 Actually Writing
The person in charge of public relations at OhmyNews has J-CAST on the current condition of the newspaper:
“We want our organization made up only with citizen reporters if possible. We had had a total of 1,431 opinion members before Nov. 14 (before the system change was made), but more than 100 of them have changed to citizen reporters.”
He said there were 2,513 registered citizen reporters (as of 4 p.m. on Nov. 28) of whom only 400 were actually sending in news stories.
“We will try to change this situation by recommending various ways of taking different angles to write news stories or improving contents with visual images,” he added.
