STOMPing through cyberspace
Response to the reading by Stephen Quinn titled ‘Straits Times online, multimedia, and print’ – WEEK 8
(Picture taken from http://jons-ashes.blogspot.com/)
Singapore’s highly-popular website STOMP is a unique example of media convergence and citizen journalism.
Unlike websites such as OhmyNews and brisbanetimes.com.au that stand on their own without a print counterpart (with the slight exception for OhmyNews because it developed a paper after the success of the website), STOMP is the online arm of the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times.
STOMP allows citizen journalists to file news stories and photos, and many of these are then picked up and used in The Straits Times. More than 80 per cent of the news on STOMP is user-generated.
In Australia, the major newspapers have embraced convergence in a smaller form. For example, the websites of major papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age offer places for readers to comment on their stories, and also advertise for any photos that readers may have of news events.
We also have a wholly online newspaper in The Brisbane Times.
However these are relatively small developments compared with STOMP – Australia is yet to come close to establishing an online news site with predominantly citizen-generated content.
But with the speed at which technology is moving, it may not be too long before we start seeing convergence embraced in a bigger way here in Australia. Watch this space.
The following video looks at the citizen media revolution, and profiles STOMP.
Video taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGn8atZhVc
