CIA The World Factbook

YI: How many actually contribute articles to OhMyNews, which is updated every day. How many do you get each day?

Oh Yeon Ho: It depends on the days. If there are big political issues, we may have more stories than other days. On average, about 150 to 200 articles come from our citizen reporters. So, in total, we have about 50,000 citizen reporters in Korea, among them 50 percent are experienced in writing at least one story, it means the other half of our citizen reporters have not written a story. But I still think those citizen reporters are very important for us, because they can be sources for OhMyNews, and they can be very loyal readers. Also, they participate in providing comments for our stories.

YI: When you say citizen reporters, does that mean they have to register with you?

Oh Yeon Ho: Yes, they must register with us because we think responsibility and accuracy is very important to us. So we ask our citizen reporters to register with us their names, addresses and email, telephone numbers, so our staff members can contact them easily to check whether their stories are correct or not.

YI: They must be very idealistic. Fifty thousand is a lot of reporters to work for one newspaper. One day you get 150 to 200 stories, how many get posted?

Oh Yeon Ho: As I said earlier, every article from our citizen reporters should be checked. It means if the story is not appropriate to publish, we will not publish. So normally, we accept about 70 percent of our citizens' reports. But the 30 percent remains as 'informal stage,' but if some citizen reporters ask us whey their stories remain in the 'informal stage,' then we will review their stories and we will re-adjust their reports. In some cases, we will clean them up and make them 'formal' (and publish them).

YI: Now, how does OhMyNews gets its revenue?

Oh Yeon Ho: To be honest, although OhMyNews is a new media, the source of our income comes from very old ways. The majority of our income comes from advertisement. Our advertisers come from big companies to small companies and individuals advertisers. About 10 percent come from our readers. Our readers read our news for free, so we asked them, 'if you think OhMyNews is a valuable media for you, then you may donate voluntarily to OhMyNews.' So about 4,000 of our readers pay voluntarily.

YI: You mean they pay voluntary subscription?

Oh Yeon Ho: Yes. Some western media might have experimented with that kind of thing, but I think in internet base it works better.

YI: Let's go back to editorial contents. What is the most popular subject?

Oh Yeon Ho: Certainly, politics is the most popular subject in OhMyNews because as you may know in Korea during the 1970s, 1980s and thru the early 1990s, we were not able to enjoy freedom of speech, especially on (the subject of) politics. But thanks to democratization, the democratic movement during that period and thanks to the internet, we are enjoying total freedom of speech. So, Korean people enjoy discussing politcal issues and OhMyNews is a kind of a playground for people, especially since our very good coverage of the 2000 presidential elections. That's why OhMyNews is strong in politics and why many readers visit the OhMyNews website to know about political issues.

YI: Do you also cover corruption issues?

Oh Yeon Ho: Yes. As you know, OhMyNews is based on citizens' reporting, but I want to mention that one of our strengths comes from our own staff reporters' in-depth reporting. We do that from the start. We cover in a very in-depth way some news that would fit the mainstream media, but are ignored and not covered. That kind of big story helps us to get more audience.

YI: But your kind of reporting must make people very upset. Has anybody challenged you or taken you to court?

Oh Yeon Ho: Well, we have had several cases. They come in two categories: one comes from the citizens' articles but others come staff members' articles. Surprisingly enough, we have very few cases from citizens' reporting which go to court. Very big cases are about articles written by our staff reporters. One example is about the 2001 presidential election. We covered military obligation issue of the opposition party's candidate's son. He did not serve in the military so we raised the issue on the background of why the son did not serve in the military. Yes, we covered some facts but finally it went to court and we did not win. So we paid some money for that case.

YI: A lot of money?

Oh Yeon Ho: A lot of money. That was the big issue of that time but it was a writing by one of our staff reporters. Compared to that, there are not too many cases involving citizens' reporting. I think it's the reason why our citizen reporters write their own stories. When they think, 'oh this is a story I can write,' they write exactly what they know. And because they write their own stories, they feel responsible and screen themselves before they submit their stories. It means our staff reporters are more humble than the citizen reporters.