One last thing...

But don’t you need special training to be a reporter?
Oh Yeon-ho: “That’s a recent trend in history. Before there were newspapers, everyone was a reporter. People passed the news to each other. The arrival of the newspaper brought about a sudden division between journalist and reader. You could only read about what the journalist considered newsworthy. That led to a narrowing of vision. The Internet has put this one-way traffic right again; never before has it been so easy to send a message into the world, and millions of people have their own weblogs. Now everyone is a journalist.”

What’s the advantage of this?
“Professional journalists allow themselves to be too influenced by authorities and experts. As more and more people are able to share their own vision of the world, tell their own version of the news, reporting will become more balanced.”

But most people aren’t objective.
“And newspapers are? Journalists say they’re objective, but that’s not for them to say; it’s up to the readers. And I don’t believe that most readers think journalists are objective. And there’s no reason they should be. It’s fine to mix facts and opinion, as long as you’re clear about it.”

How will this development change the media?
“It will bring more progress to societies, like my country, South Korea, in which the traditional media is controlled by conservatives. The power will shift to ordinary citizens who can report on social injustices that would be otherwise ignored. Citizens will be able to start determining the political agenda—which is as it should be. It’s the ultimate democratization of the media.”

Oh Yeon-ho is the founder and director of OhmyNews, a very influential Web site in South Korea that features tens of thousands of “citizen journalists” and hundreds of news reports each day. Since 2004, OhmyNews has also had an international English-language edition: http://english.ohmynews.com.