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Tagged:   Canada • eyewitness

Orato: True Stories From Real People

Link: http://www.orato.com

Love it: 3
Like it: 2
Loathe it: 1

Love it: It's among the very best in its category for accurate, original reporting.
Like it: It's solid, but sometimes lacking in originality or accuracy.
Loathe it: It's too often inaccurate or incomplete.

About the site:

Orato is a Canadian-based news Web site that showcases first person accounts from the protagonists and witnesses of events. 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 1990’s to launch a citizen journalismsite 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.

Anybody can post a story at Orato as long as it is a demonstrable true story that follows Orato’s guidelines.

About 30% of the site's content is written by the Orato staff, while the majority of articles is written by other freelance contributors (Special Correspondents) and ordinary citizens (Citizen Correspondents). 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.

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