Citizen Journalism and political neutrality

From Rebecca’s Technojournalism:

“The South Korean citizen-journalism online newspaper OhMyNews is considered a model of participatory journalism. By raising political awareness and mobilizing young voters it played a key role in the election of South Korea’s current president Roh Moo-hyun. The news and opinion on OhMyNews has always been clearly partisan in its support of Roh’s Uri party. The support turns out to be a two-way street. In an article titled OhMyNews Rolling in Gov’t Contracts, the South Korean Chosun Ilbo reports that OhMyNews gets the bulk of government contracts for advertising on online news websites. (This finding is the result of a study conducted by the opposition party, of course.)

OhMyNews founder Oh Yeon-ho recently wrote a book titled “Every Citizen is a Reporter.” It is yet to be published in English but excerpts are available on the web. Chris Schroeder recently profiled Mr. Oh for Newsweek. “