Wikipedia: college professors frown upon it while university students panic when the site goes down.

This online encyclopedia has come a long way since its debut on January 12, 2001. In allowing individuals all around the world the permission to edit and change information on the website, it epitomizes the ideal of participatory journalism. With over 100,000 regular contributors, cited by the Sydney Morning Herald, Wikipedia encourages it users to be bold in writing their posts. Due to the mass traffic that surrounds Wikipedia, individuals are more likely to get up-to-date information on a recent event since almost anyone can contribute to the news stories. The consumers of the media can now be the producers. One example that highlights this is the story of Natalie Martin. On the day of the Virginia Tech Massacre, Martin updated the page minute by minute and the site soon became one of the most popular news sources focused on this tragic event. Martin live edited the page by deleting offensive comments and bias.

As a news aggregator, Wikipedia focuses on the facts and concerns itself with taking out bias from stories. Personally, I think it’s naïve to believe that one can truly write something “unbiased”. Obviously there are some right or left wing news sources that are more blatant with their partiality in comparison to Wikipedia but to go around pronouncing, “We are an unbiased news source” seems too simplistic. It’s obviously easier said than done. In fact, Conservapedia, a website created by “self-described American conservative Christians, Andrew and Philip Schlafly” counters against Wikipedia’s so-called “liberal bias”. Granted, after actually looking through Conservapedia, it’s clear that Wikipedia is the more neutral source of information.

One paradox that I discovered with Wikipedia is that this ideal of allowing anyone to edit serves as both its’ forte and downfall. With more people changing and moderating information, the probability of creating mistakes increases. Johnathan Dee, a novelist and contributor to New York Times Magazine, wrote an article titled,  All the News that’s Fit to Print Out which highlights Wikipedia’s disposition to mistakes (or what he calls “deliberate acts of vandalism”) Dee continues on to talk about the diversity in contributors or “Wikipedians”. In the introduction, he writes about how a regular contributor CltFn created a page right after news broke loose about the arrest of half a dozen Muslim men planning to attack Fort Dix. After spending countless hours live editing throughout the day, CltFn announces that they’re “Off to bed”. The reader then learns that CltFn needs to ‘go to bed’ since they have to attend yet another day at High School.

When I was in High School, I was concerned with tanning on the beach and watching Friends re-runs, not the “Fort Dix Terror Plot”. It’s just remarkable to see the platform Wikipedia has given human beings to be able to report on issues occurring half way across the world, even if the reporting is happening simultaneously with Chemistry and Physics homework.

I just arrived at school, and Mrs. Hockin’s Grade 3 classroom, usually filled with tired, backpack burdened tweens, buzzed with chatter. My friends and I discussed what we had heard only minutes ago on the news, the disturbing footage of the twin towers crumbling to the ground. An event like this burns in the memory.

On September 11, 2011, the United States suffered four suicide attacks coordinated by terrorists from the Muslim militant group al-Qaeda. 19 suicide bombers hijacked 4 passenger planes, deliberately crashing two airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, and one plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pensylvania, after passengers tried to regain control of the plane before it hit the hijacker’s planned target of Washington, DC.

The crash of the twin towers resulted in 2606 casualties, while the crumbling of the Pentagon caused 125 casualties, and the wreck in Pensylvania 40. United by this common tragedy, the Western World pulled together. Flags were displayed at half-mast, symbolizing the mourning of the Western nations.

This national crisis resulted in the War on Terror. The US government invaded Afghanistan, searching for Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Queda who admitted responsibility for the attacks. The War on Terror is an ongoing issue, with American troops still fighting overseas ten years after it was initiated in 2001. Currently, President Barrack Obama claims to be working towards ending the war, pulling out 33 000 American troops by the Summer. Even still, the War in Afghanistan seems to continue on with no end in sight.

Diverting our attention to the media, 9/11 had profound effects on photo journalism. People with cameras on hand snapped pictures of the dramatic, flaming collapse of the Twin Towers. As a result, journalists and non-journalists alike contributed to the photo journalism network, regardless of the quality of their equipment. This resulted in a sobering collection of devastating photos documenting the events of 9/11.

As a consequence of the attacks, evening news programs had to divert their attention from domestic to global news. With profound issues like the US’s War on Terrorism, from 2002-2005, television news programs focussed 135% more on Terrorism and 102% more on foreign policy as compared to broadcasts from 1997-2000.

Millions of distraught Americans began to look to blogs for perspective on the unnerving incident of 9/11. With copious amounts of viewers navigating for updates on major news sites, blogs provided a convenient alternative with more accessible and up to date news (their lack of editors made information more current). These blogs ranged from analytical to emotional, giving voice to and clarifying the confusion that the masses were feeling at the time.

A decade later, families still cope with the gaping holes left by those who were killed in the crash. Unable to find the video mentioned in Jenny and Emily’s presentation, I instead came across hundreds of YouTube clips dedicated to lost loved ones, each giving a unique testament to the impact of 9/11. Similarly, People magazine devoted an article to the children of 9/11 on the event’s 10th anniversary, interviewing 9 year olds who never knew their fathers because of the incident.

Whether you’re from Vancouver, New York, or Afghanistan, it can be said with confidence that the attacks of September 11th made a significant impact on the way the world perceives history, so much so that people separate the chronology of modern-day events into before or after 9/11. This profound tragedy caused shock world-wide, and as a result media, communication methods, foreign policies and political goals were very much transformed.

-Karalee Congo

I don’t regularly use Google News, but I’m convinced that it is an effective way to receive news personalized to my tastes. What makes Google News an adequate article search engine for the average user? It is computer generated, articles from around the world are featured, it’s personalized to each user with a rating system, and all the information is recent and relevant.

It was launched in September of 2002 with an abundance of 4,000 articles available. The creator Krishna Bharat had it in Beta mode until 2006. How it works is, a computer scans through articles and highlights the most recent and relevant stories. All the articles are categorized by topic. Some topics include business, technology, entertainment, world news, regional news etc. There is a variety of different articles on one topic, allowing for the most perspectives to be introduced. Top stories have their own category on the top of main page. There is also a recent and most popular category. There are multiple different news editions to choose from and 19 different languages.

Alltheweb.com was being used before Google News was created. So what makes Google News special? Google News features the most recent stories. Stories are constantly being uploaded. News sources also have the choice of being on Google News. Instead of “hosting” the information the publishers of the articles receive credit. For example most of the links just take you directly to the webpage where the article is located (similar to how Google Search works). It works comparable to a website such as stumbleupon.com where it personalizes the stories that a user receives to their interests. Each user also has his or her own personalized page. A rating system is included utilizing badges and stars to further improve the efficiency of the personalized page.

Not only does Google News include articles but it also throws in YouTube videos and images that are related to particular topics. Sharing is easily accessible through the +1 function. This allows the user’s personal profile appear on search results and ads. This +1 (part of Google+) is currently in beta. I found myself on Google News at one point while doing research. I found that it didn’t prove to be useful when looking for news from the past. It certainly is effective for those who are looking for everyday news from around the world. Here is a walk through on how Google News works:

The current top story as of today (February 10, 2012) is the RCMP shooting suspect published by the CBC. Underneath the headline on the Google News homepage there are multiple photo links to other news sources that feature this story as well. It also lists that there are 439 other news sources covering this story. This article was posted only 28 minutes ago. There are buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Email and +1 before you even read the article. When I click on the article it takes me directly to the CBC News website. On the right hand side of the article there is a reappearance of these social networking buttons and also gives a count of how many shares there have been. +1 has zero. Again at the bottom of the article there are duplicates of these buttons. Back onto the Google News homepage the article post also includes the same story on the most credible or popular news sources such as the Vancouver Sun and Toronto Star. Links to related articles are given at the right hand side “Royal Canadian Mounted Police” “Alberta” and “Edmondton.” Again this link was only updated 3 minutes ago and refreshing the page after only a few minutes theres now a new Top Story demonstrating the efficiency of Google News.

We’ve all heard it, the famous line uttered by Bill Clinton when he was accused of having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, an intern at the pentagon. It all begins with Linda Price, a colleague of Lewinsky who knew about the affair and felt the moral need to tell the public about what was happening. The story was not run immediately but was eventually exposed by the now famous journalist, Matt Drudge. The story of this scandal has gone down in journalism history and is known to have given credibility to citizen journalism.

I always thought that journalists, and news sources in general clawed and scratched to be the ones to get the best story, cover the biggest scandal, and expose the deepest secrets. It puzzled me as to why NewsWeek stopped publication of the scandal. After looking into it, an interview with the former Newsweek editor explained that “his staff didn’t feel they were on firm enough ground” and that if they had been wrong, it would have ruined the magazine’s reputation…..Sucks to be them. On January 17th, 1998, The Drudge Report, a small website run only by one man had the headline “Newsweek Kills Story on White House Intern: 23-Year-Old, Sex Relationship with President”. Traffic on the site exploded and there were numerous reports of it being so busy that people couldn’t even access it. It was thanks to that single story that the website is now considered “an international clearing space for news”.

When you go the website, you sure wouldn’t think its getting millions of hits a day. It almost seems to be an amateur blog at first glance. If you take a second to really look though, I can guarantee you will quickly be intrigued. As mentioned in the presentation, Matt Drudge has a knack for drawing people in and getting them to read what he posts: with titles such as “400+ SLAUGHTERED…”, “I saw bodies of women and children lying on the roads, beheaded…”, your curiosity is undoubtedly sparked. I found it interesting and quite clever that he uses the ever mysterious “dot dot dot” in every title, you just can’t helping wanting to know what comes after it.

Matt Drudge is known to mostly run the site himself, but he actually gets help from two fellow journalists; Joseph Curl and Charles Hurt. It is also said that Matt Drudge spends his days constantly working on the website, literally posting hundreds of times a day. It’s not that he’s incessantly typing away on a keyboard; there is an occasional story written by Matt Drudge himself but the website mainly consists of his opinion on links to stories by other news websites. The goal of the website is to expose honesty in the media and provide news to the public that would not have otherwise been shown by the main stream media. To summarize; no secrets.

Nevertheless, secrets do exists and finding out about them is pretty scary stuff. The story of Matt Drudge reminded me of the “wikileaks” scandal. The result was an immense backlash and everyone from governments, to media, to corporations seemed to have something to say about it. Although the publication of government documents wasn’t technically a journalistic act, it also exposed government secrets on the basis of “True information does good”, stated by the founder of the website, Julian Assange. However, true honesty seems to come with it’s consequences. Drudge has various lawsuits against him and Assange is constantly hunted, forcing him to have no permanent address or citizenship.

Thinking about it: what don’t we know? What are governments, politicians and powerful people in general really up too behind closed doors? If Newsweek was prepared to withhold the story on the Lewinsky scandal, what else are media sources keeping from us? The necessity for citizen journalism is more obvious than ever. People such as Linda Price and the anonymous sources that sent documents to wikileaks must sadly put themselves at great risk to expose what they know. They are the only link we have to the truth and we need them. The truth is that we really have no way of knowing what’s being kept from us nor how much is being kept from us. However, I get the feeling that one of these days, we’re all in for a shock.

How quickly can a scandal spread? Well, with the Internet it can spread like wildfire. Matt Drudge of “The Drudge Report” heard about an affair between President Bill Clinton and an intern, Monica Lewinski while Clinton was in administration. The story was then leaked to NewsWeek but it was declined. Matt Drudge took this and ran- quickly.

He decided that all it takes to curate news was one man and a blog which gave him unlimited access to the public. He wanted some honesty in the media since that’s all anyone really wants in today’s world. This was the start of citizen journalism and it was all run by a single person. The Drudge Report is still around today and booming with internet hits. Matt Drudge views his site as a “international clearing ground of news” because it pushes the boundaries of what can be exposed- everything.

His site started a Canadian site called “The Little Report” which is advertised as a Canadian version of Drudge’s American site. Some are critical of the highly opinionated headings. Christian News Today says that “you’re being manipulated” by the news. In fact, the heading of their piece is “The Drudge Distort“. Headings play a very important role in Matt Drudge’s site because they intrigue people to click on them which brings them to a larger article.

The design of the site plays a large part in it’s popularity because it is fairly basic and not in-your-face flashy. Sites such as WordPress follow a similar format which is appealing to the viewers and appears less like it has been made by a corporation.

The Internet is instantaneous and allows people who used to be separated by geographical boundaries to access the same content and converse with others around the world.

Matt Drudge used a controversial topic to jump start his reporting and journalistic career as a one man blog. Though his blog is heavily opinionated by him, it attracts over two million page hits per day! Drudge is considered as a big player in the development of citizen journalism and aggregation sites.

One of the greatest advancements in the start of citizen journalism was with the creation of website “Independent Media Center”, or, more commonly known as, Indymedia or IMC. Founded on November 24th, 1999, it started because of the media coverage of the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Washington. With corporations leading the media coverage of protests and violence across the world, Indymedia looked to change the way journalism worked. As it says on it’s homepage, it “is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.” In this way, it worked on creating a more broad look into these types of stories, from people who either had strong opinions on what was happening, or people who might have witnessed the incidents themselves. This then worked as a way for people watching the news to have alternative sources besides just what corporations decided to show. There, anybody could be a journalist, and together with independent news organizations, both could work towards a fuller, perhaps more true, depiction of events.

Run on donations, what is special about Indymedia is that creates a new platform for connections between writers and readers. People who read articles online could work with moderators to pick what articles should appear on the website, and what should not. They could create either their own blogs, and post their own comments. It was social networking and the ability to spread news at the same time.

At the same time however, especially now, Indymedia is competing with many more websites with many more effective ways of doing the exact same thing. Websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr are all social networking sites that also provide the users with the ability to spread and share either their own news, or their own opinions on current events. What’s added too is that all three can notify you automatically when something pops up, and what’s more is that you can decide what kind of stuff is important enough for you to be notified about.

Also, many popular media coverage industries have taken in the ideas of sites like Indymedia by adding comment sections and changing the format so that stories that they thought could get the most reads were at the front of the site, rather than what was the most important. Anybody can then add to a story. Then there’s news stations like NPR (National public radio) that is also donation run, and seems to have lasted a lot longer than Indymedia with more creditability too. This, among other reasons, is why Indymedia has gone down in traffic just because of the upsurge of newer and more effective sites for the same means.

In January 1998 The Drudge Report broke its most important story 23-Year Old, Former White House Intern, Sex Relationship with President. This insight, designed to shock millions, was originally reported by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek. After the article was cut by publication, Matt Drudge, creator of the Drudge Report, exposed Newsweeks insight into the affair to the public.

Drudge’s first insight that received national attention was an email sent out announcing that Jack Hemp joined Rob Dole in the U.S. Presidential Elections fighting for the Republican vote. His next lead was the break of the famous Bill Clinton affair, which not only caught the attention of the political community but gossip readers and general public.

Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern shared the details of her secret relationship with the President to her co-worker, Linda Tripp, after they had both been transferred to the pentagon (Monica was sent by the White House employees in order to separate her form the President during the election.) Tripp began to collect evidence of the affair to use as immunity from prosecution, this included recorded conversations between herself and Lewinsky amongst other things. Drudge continued to post regarding this story with personal opinion and event updates.

Drudge quickly shifted the focus of his new-found blog during its creation in 1997 from a conservative gossip email dispatch to a resource where citizens could have access to the truth behind their politicians and push the limits on what information can be provided to the public. Matt Drudge has taken journalism to a international platform, the internet. Unlike most news sources the internet allows him to have the freedom to publish his own opinions, not just those of dominant corporation who edit their work to please their investors.

The Drudge Report’s homepage has a simple layout, black on white, straight to the point. Drudge relies on a few things to intrigue his million plus audience; snappy titles, eye catching photos, easy navigating and hundreds of updated posts per day. With more influence on the elections and voting process than Facebook, the few advertising spaces on the website come at a price earning them $3,500 a day. Matt Drudge’s small team of 4 (including himself, Joseph Curl, Charles Hurt, and Andrew Breitbart) are the only ones able to directly post information and links on the homepage, but they accept insights and tips from readers.

Beginning with an email-based gossip dispatch and transitioning (using shocking White House scandals) to a 24/7, million views per day website was no easy task for Matt Drudge, but agedly “He swims on the beach every day and goes and has a burrito for lunch,” according to friend Lucianne Goldberg, a conservative talk-radio host. The impact this man made on the political sphere makes us recognize the significance of citizen journalism and growth through the blogoshpere.

By Rachel Goss

The History.

Oh Yeon-ho had an idea. You could say that he had a dream. This dream was born from his accomplishment of working for a Korean newspaper as a staff reporter for 11 years. Oh used this dream to create OhmyNews, the first ever citizen journalism website based on the news. On February 22nd, 2000, Oh’s brainchild was created in Korea; for and by Korean citizens. Public citizens were suddenly given agency to write articles and submit them to this online database, based on the idea that “every citizen is a reporter.” Along with receiving payment for their work, writers received self-promotion and a chance to get their work edited and published online. OhmyNews began with just four staff members, but at its peak the website managed to receive two million views per day.

This success allowed the creation of an English version of OhmyNews on May 27th, 2004. Merely five years after the initial release, this expanded globally in April of 2005. Unfortunately, their success dwindled by 2008 from a lack of financial support, which produced a loss of $625,000. As Oh’s appeal for public funding in July 2009 was unsuccessful, he decided to stop paying writers for their contributions.

2006 brought on the first of three yearly forums that brought together journalism schools from various destinations around the world, and on November 24th 2007, OhmyNews created the School of Citizen Journalists in Korea. By 2010, however, OhmyNews closed their news website and instead opened a blog focused on citizen journalism. This blog is still running and focuses on a variety of topics, including politics, culture, international affairs, and more.

Like many organizations and inventions, unfortunately, there will always be criticisms. OhmyNews’ criticisms lie with issues of lack of trust, accuracy, and credibility with the non-professional writers. These “amateurs” also take away from the journalists who are professional, which understandably adds to the backlash that OhmyNews receives.

The Impact.

Debatably because of Oh’s invention, Korea is now the most wired country in the world. Although this fact cannot be proven, many believe that OhmyNews was the driving force to inspire non-online newspapers to take advantage of the Internet. Furthermore, the introduction of political debates and discussions into their articles helped promote the social democracy of Korea. Along with promoting two-way citizen journalism, it also allowed young people to become empowered in their ability to express their views and opinions.

 The Connection.

The reference above to Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) may have been corny, but their stories are more similar than expected. Both men had a vision, and both men completed their vision with the help of others. To compare Oh’s inventions with UBC’s own School of Journalism, there are various similarities that are worthwhile to point out. For example, based on an article by Marc Edge, both UBC and OhmyNews experienced a lack of funding that threatened the creation of such an institution. Furthermore, while both had an issue of lack of private funding, Oh’s lack of funding led to the dismantlement of payment for contributors, and UBC’s luck paid off by attaining a private donation of $3 million from Sally Aw Sian.

To conclude, many independent citizen journalists have since created their own websites to share their gift by a similar means as Oh. Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, to show one example, created a blog to share his articles and podcasts focusing on online journalism, social movements, and global conflicts.

Although OhmyNews was arguably not as popular as initially dreamed in 2000, its various trials and errors has created an impact of promoting the philosophy that “every citizen is a reporter.”

– Emily Chan.

OhmyNews is a pioneer in online citizen journalism. When the Korean version launched in early 2000, founder Oh Yeon Ho would have never imagined its rivalry with mainstream news organizations. With only 4 staff members running the entire website, its success resulted in an international version in 2005, referred to as OMNI. The way OhmyNews worked was that citizens would submit articles for online publication. Employees would fact check every article, and citizen contributors would be compensated. During peak performance, website traffic went up to 2 million viewers a day.

Despite its success, it was all downhill from there. Financial issues first arose in mid 2008, when OMNI made a net loss of $625,000. OhmyNews’ 75 employees and their salaries had to be scaled down. In addition, OMNI stopped paying its contributors, opting for a monthly prize system. When founder Oh appealed for funding in an open letter to contributors and readers in January 2009, its results were feeble. OMNI’s last nail in their coffin was in September 2010 when it was announced that the site was to be closed down, converting it into a blog about citizen journalism. Despite the problems, OhmyNews Korea continues to run.

There were many areas which issues went wrong from worse. First, it became extremely unrealistic for the future of Ohmynews to run with solely 75 employees. By September 2009, there were 39000 citizen journalists contributors. With a 1:520 ratio of staff to contributors, there was no sustainable, long-term solution.

This leads to the issue of valid and bias of content. As noted by OhmyNews’ code of ethics, citizens are expected to follow the honour code by not spreading false information. Relying on the honour code and a limited employee fact check raises many skeptics. That’s like expecting people to not evade fairs on the busses, the Seabus and Skytrain– with both systems, it’s impossible to properly monitor everything.

Accounting for other pitfalls, OhmyNews’ biggest problem was that founder Oh appealed for funding to the public.  Asking for public donations is simply unrealistic in 2009. By this time, mainstream media had already established their presence on the Internet. At the same time, social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter were starting to gain momentum. From a practical point of view, why should online users pay for free content already available elsewhere? People will just simply move on to free sites for their dose of daily news.

Similarly, Wikipedia also asks for donations. Ever tried reading an article to see “a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales”? And just how many times have you closed that box, thinking “Geez, and how much money does Wales have?” Quite frankly, people don’t always think about why a website may be asking for money, but to do the simple task of asking takes many by surprise. I suppose that some people may take the phrase “freedom of information” a bit too literally.

It is simply undeniable that Ohmynews played an crucial role in shaping and challenging mainstream media to go online. Nonetheless, their monetary issues and problems with content validity has disaster written all over it, forcing Ohmynews to cut their losses.

The Internet has allowed the human civilization to break many barriers, whether that be language or geographical. Online forums and news sites have given us the privilege to connect and share information from community to community. With the ascension of the Internet, the invention of such sites skyrocketed.

An example of this “citizen journalism” is ohmynews.com. Ohmynews.com was founded in February 2000, by a South Korean journalist named Oh Yeon-ho, later to be known as a key player in the beginnings of citizen journalism.

If you want to learn more about Oh Yeon-ho, here is his biography.

Although ohmynews.com is well known for its back-and-forth journalism between users and reporters, it first started as a network similar to Yahoo! or CBC, strictly one direction in the way of news flow.  However, the implementation of this “participatory journalism” really set it apart from larger networks due to its innovation and dependence on the users to share information. At first, ohmynews.com was exclusively focused in South Korea, but soon an English version of ohmynews.com was launched in 2004. Once rid of its language barrier, this allowed the platform to stretch globally on a much wider scale.

The main idea behind the site, that anyone and everyone could be a journalist, was what really drove ohmynews.com. Any person that had access to a computer could contribute to ohmynews.com, making it an innovative new tool to read up on news that was part of a much bigger picture, a global news community.  Topics such as politics, society and culture, international affairs, education, the economy, technology, sports, and entertainment are all featured on ohmynews.com, providing to a broad range of interests.

Reddit is a similar and very popular platform in which users can post news and stories, which are moderated through other users and mediators, except in Reddit’s case, the site is more of a internet meme-factory.

Ohmynews.com allowed users to be more active when reading the news.  Suddenly the user could be inclined to comment, post, and share, sometimes overwhelming the staff posts.  The site has since been updated, and now features a recent comments bar where one can view the recent comments posted to different stories and follow and see what’s trending (like Twitter) and follow the most popular posts.

The new site also features a blog-like structure consistent with some of most popular sites today. The new blog layout is much more simple and easy to archive, considering how much content has built up over the last couple of years. This layout is much more efficient and less complicated than a forum-style site.

Nevertheless, ohmynews.com was the igniting spark that allowed citizen journalism to spread, in an easy and simple manner. It let regular people become journalists overnight and allowed the connection between reporter and reader to become dually significant, something that has shaped our society and our generation.

Sarah Kirkwood (31441116)