OhmyNews Succeeds With P2P News; Struggles With Business Model

For several years, OhmyNews has been the P2P news posterchild, everyone’s favorite example of citizen journalism at work. But when BusinessWeek’s Seoul bureau chief Moon Ihlwan looked a little deeper at OhmyNews as a business, he found some cracks in the facade. The company, which had several years of “modest” profits is losing money now as it looks for “a profitable business model.” The 90 full-time employees and 44,000 — give or take a few — contributors produce about 150 articles a day, generating revenues estimated at $6 million or so this year. The bulk — 60 percent — comes from ads; the rest from licensing and other sources. The company raised $11 million from Softbank earlier this year to fund expansion and develop the English language edition (Five editors, 1,500 contributors, 100-plus countries).
CEO Oh Yeon Ho talks about expanding but some observers don’t think it can work outside of Korea or outside of a politically motivated environment. BW mentions cit j efforts that didn’t make it — including Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere — but I’m not sure he’s aware of the differences between various projects. Oh says he isn’t stressing about the money: “I want OhmyNews to be sustainable, but my ambition is to spread citizen journalism around the world, not to make money.”
But OhmyNews Communications Director Jean Min tells BW a revamped Web 2.0 version is on the way: “In any industry, no business model is sustainable unless you constantly seek innovation to adapt to new changes.”

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