The truest eyes of the events around the world are everyday citizens living on the frontlines of troubled or conflict zones. These events are often covered by outside journalists, at best embedded news organizations, and not told through the eyes of the people who experience the events in the way that impacts them the most. Foreign newspapers and media in the United States and beyond don’t have the economic means to regularly present in-depth coverage. In February 2007 only 21 percent of coverage was international and that content was dominated by coverage of the situation in Iraq. Much of the coverage also follows the characteristic if it bleeds, it leads headlines approach and offers little to no opportunities for citizen to tell their own stories.

The world becomes increasingly more one dimensional and lacking in diverse voices and perspectives with this type of journalism. The borders, geographical, political, ethnic, cultural and religious, erode, fade and soon become non-existent. As the Internet evolves into a global society, a virtual dinnertime conversation shared through social networks, more voices are emerging. Where the world meets the web it is becoming increasingly evident that the issues we have to tackle are predominantly global, multifaceted, unique and require the participation of many. It is during this time of a complete transition in how the world communicates the local to the global that the news media is decreasing their international reporting and staff, by around 50 percent. It is a dangerous shift in news when increasingly what’s needed is more international reporting and more “eyes” in the world.

The web as a distribution channel is not the real issue. It has been the lack of coverage of human interest and complex personal stories emerging as news events in certain regions. There has been a lack of multiple media channels and in alternative media. The future game of the media business is about content packaging, not creation and distribution. The main disruptions have been open-source content management systems and self-publishing platforms. Putting up a website now is as simple as a few clicks. You are up and blogging in no time and can start to share your opinions. There are an enormous number of Web sites providing possibilities for social bookmarking, multimedia upload and integration with your own site, which will help you in the promotional part. Yet, content promotion is one of the biggest challenges for any blogger, photographer, video maker or any other content creator.

One of the key things moving forward is to distribute the content creation to the people really affected and create multiple, easily maintainable media channels. We have seen a development where the international presence of news agencies are constantly and steadily declining leading to a very dangerous situation where events will not get covered. However the inhabitants and people at the location of these events will be able to cover these events, as well as have the incentive to cover the real stories from the ground. Yet they usually lack the proper tools to do so.

The project “Ojo” is addressing this digital divide by helping the offline community find the paths to report their stories and views. In many cases the main obstacle is a lack of knowledge of the tools available and trust in the technology.