Hi Commoners far and wide:

Although it is lesser known, we at Wikinews (english edition) also have a picture of the year competition. Basically the focus is on choosing an image that is both pretty and is newsworthy. All Wikimedians with greater than 50 edits, and have had an account since Jan 10 (on any wikimedia wiki, but please merge your accounts), are invited to vote, and as such I would like to extend an invitation to everyone at Wikimedia Commons, to come down to wikinews and vote. This will be the second time we have done this, last year [[File:Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia 1 by David Shankbone.jpg]] was selected as the 2007 wikinews picture of the year. From the summary on [[wikinews:WN:POTY]]:

The aim of this idea is to have an election for a Wikinews Picture of the Year 2008, in an analogy to the Picture of the Year contest on Commons. With this initiative we would like to promote photojournalism and quality images with great news value for use on Wikinews and other Wikimedia projects. This idea is not meant to compete with the election on Commons (the rules and candidates are totally different) or criticise Commons in any way, rather it is aimed to promote more collaboration between Wikinews and Wikimedia photographers.

Round 1 voting opens on Jan 24, 00:00 UTC, and closes on the 31st. All images are selected from images that have appeared on [[n:template:News in pictures]] in 2008 (which is on the wikinews main page). For more information, please see: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Picture_of_the_Year_2008

Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood wikinewsie, [[wikinews:user:bawolff]]

p.s. I hope this isn't too off topic