<nettime> Needed: online media which can bring attention to problems before disaster

[Ronda Hauben <ronda@umcc.ais.org>]

After a slow start, The US press has rallied in a better than usual way to
challenge the poor handling of the crisis in New Orleans by the US government.

This points up the problem with the media in the US. Though several newspapers had
published articles about the crisis that was brewing in New Orleans because of the
cutbacks in funding and the administrative changes in FEMA, no press was powerful
enough to have this problem taken seriously.

This raises the problem of the need for a progressive press in the US that will be
able to bring needed attention to serious problems before they turn into disasters
as has happened in New Orleans.

I have written an article about how a similar problem was recognized in south
Korea, and how the online newspaper OhmyNews was created to begin to make a dent
in this problem.

The urls for the article are:

Advancing "News guerrillas"
OhmyNews and 21st Century Journalism
Ronda Hauben 08.09.2005
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20853/1.html

or

OhmyNews and 21st Century Journalism
Ronda Hauben chronicles the birth of the newspaper and its new form
of online journalism
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=8&no=246787&rel_no=1

I welcome comments and discussion on the article either on this
mailing list or on either of the discussion sites where the article
appears.

with best wishes

Ronda


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