Orato
Encyclopedia
Orato is an international news Web site that showcases first person accounts from the protagonists and witnesses of events.
It was recognized as one of the top 12 news websites in the world by the 2008 Webby Awards
, called the Oscars of the Internet by The New York Times, receiving approximately 10,000 visits per day, up to 55,000, from a mostly American demographic.
Anybody can post a story at Orato as long as it is a demonstrably true story that follows Orato’s guidelines.
The name of the site comes from the Latin and it means "I speak". The idea of eyewitness accounts inspired Orato’s founder, Sam Yehia in the late 1990s to launch a citizen journalism
site whose motto is: "True Stories From Real People”. Yehia said it is designed to be the “CNN of the individual”.
In 2000, following focus group and survey study analysis, an early version of Orato.com went online and was awarded "Yahoo Site of the Week".
The site showcases stories from around the world and currently has registrants from 66 countries.
About 30% of the site's content is written by the Orato staff, while the majority of articles is written by other freelance contributors and ordinary citizens. Similar open source perspective on news reporting has been explored by Wikinews, with the added distinction that any user can edit articles at any time, while in Orato, only editors or the original author can edit a story.
Story ideas come directly from correspondents or are based on assignments from Orato editors (See, for example, the current Top Ten Story Ideas. Users can choose from 11 story categories, including Current Events, Entertainment, Health and Science, Sports, Lifestyles, Travel and Adventure, EBuzz, Love and Sex, Mysteries and Podium.
Readers can rate stories on the site from one to five stars.
Orato’s contributors and correspondents registration site was launched on June 2005. The site with all its functionalities and sections was officially a year later, in June 2006.
As of April 12, 2010, the site was not working.
It was recognized as one of the top 12 news websites in the world by the 2008 Webby Awards
Webby Awards
A Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile....
, called the Oscars of the Internet by The New York Times, receiving approximately 10,000 visits per day, up to 55,000, from a mostly American demographic.
Anybody can post a story at Orato as long as it is a demonstrably true story that follows Orato’s guidelines.
The name of the site comes from the Latin and it means "I speak". The idea of eyewitness accounts inspired Orato’s founder, Sam Yehia in the late 1990s to launch a citizen journalism
Citizen journalism
Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information...
site whose motto is: "True Stories From Real People”. Yehia said it is designed to be the “CNN of the individual”.
In 2000, following focus group and survey study analysis, an early version of Orato.com went online and was awarded "Yahoo Site of the Week".
The site showcases stories from around the world and currently has registrants from 66 countries.
About 30% of the site's content is written by the Orato staff, while the majority of articles is written by other freelance contributors and ordinary citizens. Similar open source perspective on news reporting has been explored by Wikinews, with the added distinction that any user can edit articles at any time, while in Orato, only editors or the original author can edit a story.
Story ideas come directly from correspondents or are based on assignments from Orato editors (See, for example, the current Top Ten Story Ideas. Users can choose from 11 story categories, including Current Events, Entertainment, Health and Science, Sports, Lifestyles, Travel and Adventure, EBuzz, Love and Sex, Mysteries and Podium.
Readers can rate stories on the site from one to five stars.
Orato’s contributors and correspondents registration site was launched on June 2005. The site with all its functionalities and sections was officially a year later, in June 2006.
As of April 12, 2010, the site was not working.
See also
- BlogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
- Participatory MediaParticipatory mediaParticipatory media include community media, blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging and social bookmarking, music-photo-video sharing, mashups, podcasts, participatory video projects and videoblogs...
- Independent Media CenterIndependent Media CenterThe Independent Media Center is a global participatory network of journalists that report on political and social issues. It originated during the Seattle anti-WTO protests worldwide in 1999 and remains closely associated with the global justice movement, which criticizes neo-liberalism and its...
- Local newsLocal newsIn journalism, local news refers to news coverage of events in a local context which would not normally be of interest to those of other localities, or otherwise be of national or international scope.-Television:...
- Open source journalismOpen source journalismOpen source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com...
- WikinewsWikinewsWikinews is a free-content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The site works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an...