OhmyNews shows how to do journalism online

SFGate:

With the motto “every citizen is a reporter,” 5-year-old OhmyNews has engaged its audience in ways that U.S. print and television news outlets, faced with a steep decline in readers and viewers, only dream of.

The site has a cultlike following, among both writers thrilled to see their views spread widely and readers who say they like getting an uncensored, if uneven, version of the news.

I am very much in awe of OhmyNews. They seem to have figured out the online journalism model so perfectly, and I don’t understand why we haven’t seen more American or European contenders in this space. I mean, with $10 million in revenue, 54 staff, profitable for 2 years and counting, and 70 book deals testifying to the quality of the reporting, what’s not to like?

To me, this is the next logical step after weblogs and the nanopublishing empires, and I think we’re going to see a lot of action in this space in the coming months and years.