2009/11/27 Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com:
If there were a body of wiki-journalists going out, willing to give their work for free then we could have proper wiki-reporting.
As things stand, we nick stuff, refactor it, and lay it down.
Again, as a reader, Wikimedia projects are my go-to place. But I'm yet to hear that we can justify some of the stuff that goes on.
We add background information and context from wider sources than newspapers. It's also somewhat questionable how much of a dent we make in traffic for day to day news. Sure we take a decent percentage of the traffic for the really big stories (2008 Mumbai attacks, Michael Jackson's death, the new pope) but not so much for day to day news.