QotW9: Stomp Storm

Scientifically, a storm must be formed under certain conditions. Once all the required factors being met, a storm is born with the initial power. Like a storm, Stomp has the power or the strong base for citizen journalism. STOMP provides the best-ever platform for Singapore citizens to report by videos, photos, blogs via SMS,MMS, email and web. However, in order to make a success citizen journalism website in the Web 2.0 age, STOMP need to have more activity users.
The idea of citizen journalism is that everybody is a reporter. As we take a look at STOMP, there are variety content spreading from Talk back chit chat to Stompcast... In fact, there are so many ways a citizen can become a journalist on STOMP. However, as we compare to what Dan Gillmor defined about citizen journalism- the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information, STOMP is still far away from a citizen journalism website (Gillmor, 2004).
In Singapore Seen, there are not so many new photos updated. It is probably due to some restrictions of content. Obviously, users must follow a number of rules and regulations as well.
However, there is a more free-to-discuss zone: Talk Back. I had eagerly clicked on Talk back to see how Singaporean voice their problems out before realizing that Talk back is a Vbulletin forum. So, the so-called Talk back is just a new name for Disscussion board which we can find everywhere on the Internet. Worse than that, the skin of the Vbulletin board is totally contrast and ugly as compared to the whole website.
The best content award should be given to StompCast, especially SPI series ( Singapore Paranormal Investigation). The horror reality show was filmed unprofessional intendedly. It creates a true user-generated content feeling to viewers. However, where does the show contents come from? Let's heard from STOMP

Hooked on STOMP's paranormal series? Want more episodes? Let us know in Talkback>>

So all you need to do is to ask for your content through a community board. Well, how user-oriented Stompcast is! See what Stompcast promised to users

In order to create an Ideal citizen journalism, we need to see the influence of STOMP on Singapore users. The more people surf STOMP, the more chance they will contribute and the more citizens contribute to STOMP, the more success its citizen journalism is. However, the statistic show that STOMP is not really as hot as it said.
An average of 6.3 pages is what surfers spend on STOMP. It means normally, people which surf around 6 pages on STOMP before they move to another web site. The cold hard truth is STOMP has more than 200 pages (Alexa, 2007).
Furthermore, STOMP rank 125 of all Singapore website (Alexa, 2007). It's not even in the Top 100 popular website of Singapore. How could a citizen journalism website be not in the Top 100 things that Singaporean concern about?
Below is a deeper analysis of where people go on Stomp.com.sg:

* talkback.stomp.com.sg - 32%
* singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg - 31%
* stomp.com.sg - 25%
# epl.stomp.com.sg - 6%
# starblog.stomp.com.sg - 4%
# stinkandspill.stomp.com.sg - 1%
# mmsing.stomp.com.sg - 1% (Alexa, 2007)
We can tell that people love chit chat more than being a citizen journalist.

II. How can we improve

Honestly, SPH has done a marvelous job to stir up the citizen journalism in Singapore. It has not yet succeed because of external factors which are beyond SPH ability. However, there are few things STOMP could take into consideration

1. Allow users to personalize homepage because we saw that not all users surf ever part of the website. With the homepage rite now, it is truly overloaded for audiences. There are so many things which they do not need.
2. There should be users who are editors, reviewers. We have citizen journalism but we also need citizen editors in order to make sure that reports are un-interpreted purposely.
3. Make a nicer skin for Talk Back. People are sometime underestimated the design of a community site while it is the key figure.

III. Conclusion
As David Carr recomend to "those of us who perpetrate journalism know in our hearts that it is a craft, not a profession, one that requires a finite set of skills to do competently and a lot of passion to do well", we need to cultivate Singaporeans' journalism spirit ( The New York Times, 2007). Once Singaporeans have the required set of skills, STOMP will be a better and truly CITIZEN JOURNALISM site.

References:
1. Gillmor, D. (2004). We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html#chap1

2. Alexa (2007). Related info for Singapore. Retrieved March 29, 2007 from http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=stomp.com.sg.

3.STOMP. Retrieved on March 30, 2007 from http://www.stomp.com.sg/

4. Carr, D. (2007). All the World's a story. The New Yorks Times. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/business/media/19carr.html?ex=1331956800&en=223e434f8bf020ab&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink