Mark,
Half a world away and closer than ever, eh? (Thanks for the unsolicited plug!)

After the excellent sessions, I was lucky enough to land an invitation to to visit the newsroom of OhMyNews (http://english.ohmynews.com/) and hear from founder Yeon Ho Oh about his marvelous citizen media experiment.

Some quick scribbles on the laptop:

Mr. Oh defines OhMyNews as a "Massively distributed collaborative news operation on the web"

June 1 (Today!) he has updated his site to include participatory EDITING and RANKING as well.

New definition: Massively distributed collaborative editorial participation on the web

Think = OHMYNEWS + WikiNews . . . Hmmm - very smart guy.

So - readers today have a choice between a version of the reports edited by the professional-trained OH My editing staff OR a version of the site where stories are being ranked (by aggregate vote) by readers.

OH MY, indeed,

It is designed to be a 'playground for readers'

"Straight news is not the standard."
Writing craft is not as important as the news value or opinions of the contributors.
Most reports are essays, columns, opinions, facts, alerts, reviews and criticism.

And who are these rebel amateurs?

"Tech-savvy, youth, professional, educated, liberals fostering a social revolution largely because they are unhappy with conservative reporting by mainstream media." In Korea - the conservative media dominates.

And why Korea?
Over 90 percent of citizens age 10-40 are internet users - a total of 33 million users.

Korea enjoys over 80 percent broadband integration.

Korea is an interconnected, small society.

Korean keyboard allows for real time typing - very simple - as fast as talking. so not difficult to transmit live text reports from the scene of breaking news.

Oh, and the good news is that they actually produce a weekly pulp edition of their best stories.

The pen can do more good than evil, so use that might wisely