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and Web newspaper I have been writing for. It was my first experience in this area. At the OMNI Third International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul in July, Elgar Welch from Australia told us about Scopical. Scopical is a new media, I believe many others will follow.

I like to write for OMNI, Orato, My News India. To write for all of those it is necessary to be aware of contributing with material with international appeal.

I decided to start writing to see how far I could get with it, because I like it and because I wanted to make some money too. I did have some previous experience for I created and kept a village newspaper for two years. It was printed and distributed from house to house in the village where I was living at the time in Campinas, in the state of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. But writing in English to an international crowd of readers was far different, much more challenging and exciting.

Anyone can write. All you have to do is to find your media, choose a topic and get hands on work. I chose Brazil, its beauties, parties, troubles, controversies, government - and went on. I do have my preferences: controversies, achievements, politics, beautiful places, people in general and their life experiences - not exactly in that order.

You don't need to be so skilled; there is room to learn. Try once, twice, it will get easier each time, especially if you get some coaching from your editor. The good collaborative Web sites will receive your material and edit it before they publish it. This is done, most of the time, by professional journalists working as editors. They are your best friends.
By comparing what you have submitted and what was actually published you can learn a lot.

I hope you may be as lucky as I was, for I got Claire George right in the beginning; she used to work as an editor for OMNI. She always helped me with her remarks and guidelines: "Why don't you interview some people on that matter?" she'd say, or, "How about some pictures to illustrate your point more?" I was lucky to have that.

(A note for Web site owners: bid on good interactive editing if you want to have good collaborators all over the world. It won't take much longer and will provide you with better and better material each time.)

People are writing more and more, and through the Web, new opportunities to participate appear every day. As Mr. Oh Yeon Ho, president and CEO of OhmyNews, said during the forum, "In the many voices there is truth." I would add: these voices are getting louder

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