One might think that citizen journalism would flourish in the U.S., this cradle of Western-style democracy, and all the blogging would surely point that way. Yet it has really had little impact in this country, for all the talk about it in journalism schools.

Where citizen journalism is having a huge impact is, of all places, South Korea, where a site called OhmyNews has become a major news source. The site has put the country in the vanguard of citizen journalism.

OhmyNews, founded six years ago, attracts about 600,000 visitors a day on average and is profitable. Now, much of its focus is on expansion, with the U.S. somewhere on its radar, if at this point just a blip.

Last year, OhmyNews launched an English-language site. Then in May, OhmyNews announced a deal to exchange web site links to stories with the International Herald Tribune. And come August, Ohmynews intends to expand its influence yet further around the globe by launching a Japanese-language site.

Certainly the ambitions of those involved aren’t small. "We’d like to spread citizen journalism to the world," explains Euntaek Hong, editor in chief of the English-language site. "We’d like to give voices to people who are under- or unreported by Western media."

Some believe that the site has already achieved a lot in that regard.

"OhmyNews is a tremendous inspiration as the one that has pioneered citizens’ media. They have started to prove that there is a solid business model behind citizens media," says Susan DeFife, the CEO of Backfence.com, which operates a string of American hyper-local web sites that rely on local residents for much of their content.

OhmyNews was founded in 2000 by Yeon-ho Oh, operating on the notion that, as he puts it, everyone is a reporter. Oh had been a journalist for a string of radical publications over 10 years. His aim then was to provide an alternative to the mainstream Korean press, which he believed had a conservative bias.

The idea was to revolutionize the flow of media by bringing in ordinary people’s voices. As such the site relies on some 43,000 citizen reporters for the bulk of the stories posted on the site. These stories are edited by a team of 60 staff reporters, who also supplement the coverage by providing stories themselves.

The site has now built itself into something many purveyors of internet sites can only dream of – a profitable business. The company says that it has been in the black since 2003. Reports say some 70 percent of its revenue comes from advertising. The remainder is from selling its news stories and from donations from its readers.

Its English-language site, launched last July, now has 1,000 citizen reporters from 91 countries. Once the site gets more established, it will also begin selling advertising. Hong won’t release the number of visitors that the site is getting, saying it is too early to do so, but he does say that the number is doubling every three months.

The hope is that a recent deal with the International Herald Tribune will help build up its ranks of readers and reporters. In the deal, announced in May, the two companies have agreed to exchange web site links for story headlines. Hong also believes it the deal may help build the credibility of citizen journalism.

In August, the beta version of its Japanese-language site goes live. It remains to be seen whether the site will manage in Japan the sort of success that it has seen in South Korea. Some believe the tendency for a conservative bias in the South Korean media left a hole ready for OhmyNews to move into.

But if Japan does go well, a U.S venture seems inevitable: Says Hong: "In the near future, we don’t have any plan to launch OhmyNews U.S. In the long run, I think we will have a plan."

Meanwhile, in online ratings, Microsoft was the No. 1 parent company for the week ended June 4, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The data had been delayed from last week after a data processing glitch, which also wiped out information on time spent per person during internet sessions.

Yahoo was the No. 1 brand, followed by Google, MSN, Microsoft and AOL. For the week ended June 11, GUS Plc once again retained the top spot among advertisers, and Yahoo served up the most impressions.

Average usage estimates were unavailable because of the data processing problems. Nielsen//NetRatings says all the problems will be fixed for next week’s charts.