Gates scholar to give talk on citizen journalism

  • January 12, 2011
Gates scholar to give talk on citizen journalism

Andrew Gruen will address the Online News Association.

Gates scholar and journalist Andrew Gruen is to speak at an Online News Association meeting next week about his experience of working with a leading citizen journalism site in South Korea.

Andrew Gruen, communications officer on the Gates Scholars Council, will be speaking at City University on 18th January.

He will be talking about his work at Korean citizen journalism site OhmyNews in 2009/10.

Andrew, who is studying for PhD on accountability journalism in the digital age, will speak about why citizen journalism has flourished in South Korea, but not in other parts of the world and about the challenges and opportunities for journalism students in today’s media marketplace.

The event starts at 6pm.

The Online News Association is composed largely of professional digital journalists. Founded in 1999, ONA now has more than 1,600 professional members whose principal livelihood involves gathering or producing news for digital presentation.

Andrew has worked for a variety of news media, including CNET.com, the BBC’s news website and Orlando-based NBC affiliate WESH where he was a digital executive producer. He won a Gates scholarship in 2009 to do an MPhil looking at the social structures that support citizen participation in news.

After completing his MPhil dissertation in 2009, “The Development of Citizen Journalism”, he headed to Seoul, South Korea. There, on a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, he continued his research on citizen journalism by working for OhmyNews, where he acted as the editor of OhmyNews International, heading a complete relaunch of that product.  In addition, he was a special projects producer, helping to arrange, write, and report a series on social welfare in the European Union.

For his PhD he aims to develop new metrics of success for news enterprises and conduct comparative case studies on the very best.

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