Symbol of citizen journalism, which it was originally in the early 2000s, the South Korean website OhmyNews is launching a call for help. In an open letter published on its website, the founder of the website, Mr. Oh Yeon-ho disclosed that the online newspaper lost 30,000 euros this year, due to falling advertising revenue. He asks readers to join the venture contributing 10.000 wons a month (5,60 €) to enable the journal to survive.
Mr Ho said that if 100,000 readers joined before the end of the year, then OhmyNews could survive. "For news media to remain healthy, it will have to earn at least 50% of its income from the sales of content or paid subscriptions. Despite our best efforts, OhmyNews still relies on advertisers for more than 70% of its revenue" he said.
Founded in 2000, OhmyNews proclaimed a new model of journalism with the motto "Every citizen is a reporter." Most of the articles published are written by citizens and only a third of them comes from the 55 journalists of the website.
In August 2008, OhmyNews had already been forced to close its Japanese site, launched with great fanfare two years ago with the support of the Softbank.
On July 11, four days after the publication of the call, 4,000 readers had joined "the club of 100,000" to save the log.
* The open letter from the president of OhmyNews
* The reading on the "100,000 Club" (in Korean)
