I am happy to report that I have reached a cooperation agreement with
EUObserver.com. This is one of the few websites that does original
reporting on the European Union, in news style and reasonably neutral. The
terms of the agreement are as follows:
1)
EUObserver.com agrees to put the text of the first paragraph of each
story (the part which is shown on the frontpage) in the public domain.
That paragraph usually provides a good summary of the story.
2) We agree to cite
EUOBserver.com as a source for each of these copied
summaries (as we already do with all stories reported on "Current
events").
We can of course choose which stories to put on Wikipedia -- we will not
want to run commentaries or human interest stories, for example.
The agreement enters a trial phase now and we will review our cooperation
after a month. Text put in the public domain of course remains there. And
as usual, we can re-edit the summaries as we wish.
Details and discussion on [[Wikipedia:EUobserver cooperation]] and its
talk page.
While I am not a fan of the idea of a Wikinews spinoff project (primarily
because I think that news and encyclopedia are very closely linked), I do
believe that this could be the beginning of an expansion into the news
area, and similar agreements might be reached with other publications.
It's a fair deal: They give part of their content to the public, we
provide them with a steady stream of traffic to their site -- without
advertising it, simply by citing it as a source. I'm sure some other
independent news websites might be interested in such a deal.
Regards,
Erik