I just watched Hong Eun-taek,  Editor-In-Chief of the of South Korea based citizen journalism project OhMyNews speak at the NetSquared conference (disclosure: I work for Net Squared).  Amongst the interesting details of  Eun-taek's talk was a statement that the organization aims to become a global news wire similar to the AP and Reuters.  One of the most recent steps towards that end is a partnership begun in recent weeks to swap headlines between the prestigious International Herald Tribune.

I think there is an important difference between the recent high-profile partnerships between the AP and Technorati and between Sphere and Time Magazine and this partnership.  Specifically, while it is meaningful for a mainstream media organization to include links indicating "what the blogosphere is saying about this topic" - I would contend that it is meaningful in a different way for prominent parties in the citizen journalism camp and in the traditional media camp to permanently display each others' headlines in a box on their sites.  It's an interesting form of mutual recognition that goes beyond the relatively casual link list to the medium in general.

The IHT/OhMyNews partnership is also clearly important because it involves two parties that are not based in the United States.  Ethan Zuckerman from Global Voices Online is speaking now about the huge explosion of content producers from China, Africa, Brazil and the Middle East/North Africa that is on its way.  This partnership is liable to be remembered as a key development in the relationship between old media and new media on the global stage.