Microsoft Word Cyber Journalism docx

Citizen journalism & World Trade Organization WTO 
In 1999, activists in Seattle created a response to the WTO meeting being held there. 
These activists understood the only way they could get into the corporate media was by 
blocking the streets. Then they realized that a scant 60 seconds of coverage would show 
them being carted off by the police, but without any context to explain why they were 
protesting. They knew they had to create an alternative media model. 
Since then, the 
Indymedia 
movement has experienced exponential growth, 
and IMCs have been created in more than 200 cities all over the world. 
Simultaneously, journalism "by the people" began to flourish, enabled by emerging 
internet and networking technologies, such as weblogs, chat rooms, message 
boards, wikis, and mobile computing. A relatively new development is the use of 
convergent polls, allowing editorials and opinions to be submitted and voted on. Over 
time, the poll converges on the most broadly accepted editorials and opinions. In South 
Korea, OhmyNews became popular and commercially successful with the motto, "Every 
Citizen is a Reporter." Founded by Oh Yeon-ho on February 22, 2000, it has a staff of 40 
or more traditional reporters and editors who write about 20% of its content, with the rest 
coming from other freelance contributors who mostly are ordinary citizens. OhmyNews 

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now has an estimated 50,000 contributors, and has been credited with transforming 
South Korea's conservative political environment. 
In 2000, The Raven launched a Web television station aimed at participatory journalism, 
reporting on events in the Daytona Beach area. In 2001, themeparkinsider.com became 
the first online publication to win a major journalism award for a feature that was 
reported and written entirely by readers, earning an Online Journalism Award from 
the Online News Association and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism for its 
"Accident Watch" section, where readers tracked injury accidents at theme parks and 
shared accident prevention tips. 
During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, both the Democratic and Republican parties 
issued press credentials to citizen bloggers covering the convention, marking a new level 
of influence and credibility for nontraditional journalists. Some bloggers also began 
"watch dogging" the work of conventional journalists, monitoring their work for biases 
and inaccuracy. 
A recent trend in citizen journalism has been the emergence of what blogger Jeff 
Jarvis terms hyper local journalism, as online news sites invite contributions from local 
residents of their subscription areas, who often report on topics that conventional 
newspapers tend to ignore. "We are the traditional journalism model turned upside 
down," explains Mary Lou Fulton, the publisher of the Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, 
California. "Instead of being the gatekeeper, telling people that what's important to them 
'isn't news', we're just opening up the gates and letting people come on in. We are a better 
community newspaper for having thousands of readers who serve as the eyes and ears 
for the Voice, rather than having everything filtered through the views of a small group 
of reporters and editors." 

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