[Foundation-l] 10+ English Wikinews stories containing original reporting published

Along with the 1,000 page milestone, another small milestone has been reached on the English Wikinews: The 10th article containing original reporting has been published. Since this has been one of a major points of contention when Wikinews was first proposed, I'd like to give you all a brief overview of the progress on this front so far. When we have the 100th article containing original reporting, I'd also like to send out a brief press release. First of all, I think all the original reporting stories we've had so far were responsibly written and reasonably well-researched. Reporters are encouraged by policy to publish their notes (e-mails, transcripts, etc.) for other people to check, as is common within real editorial offices. The policy governing original reporting is at: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Original_reporting A list of all such articles can be found at: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Category:Original_reporting The process for becoming an "official" Wikinews reporter is at: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Credentials What "original reporting" means in practice varies from case to case. Since there are only 10 such articles so far, it is reasonable to take a look at each of them: 1) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Cambridge_Planning_Board_approves_new_science_b… What the reporter did: took photos of the construction site and the notice of public hearing. 2) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bright_object_falls_from_sky_over_northwest_Uni… What the reporter did: observe the object and describe his observation. (The report has also been confirmed through other sources.) Interesting: The report was first submitted through the http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Submit_a_story interface. 3) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Unrest_in_Belize What the reporter did: observe the protests, describe his observations, and take photos. (This was a scoop on the western mainstream media.) 4) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Report_urges_Kenya_to_ban_plastic_bags What the reporter did: contact the US Film and Bag Federation and ask them for a comment on a proposed tax on paper and plastic bags. 5) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/New_York_Public_Library_opens_collection_of_275… What the reporter did: contact the NYPL and Larry Lessig regarding the question whether public domain art can be encumbered with license or usage fees. 6) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Iraqi_elections_kept_low-key%2C_but_secure%2C_i… What the reporter did: observe the voting process and take photos of the polling stations. 7) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/GAA:_Westmeath_beat_Donegal_by_narrowest_of_mar… What the reporter did: watch a football game and write a report. 8) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/First_Swahili_office_suite_released_in_Dar_es_S… What the reporter did: conduct an extensive interview with project leader Alberto Escudero-Pascual. / /9) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Conference_discusses_the_credibility_of_blogs What the reporter did: provide coverage directly from the conference and send it to other Wikinewsies via IRC who then summarized it in the article. 10) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Atlas_V_rocket_launches_with_Inmarsat_satellite What the reporter did: watch a webcast of the launch and describe it. --------- So in this small selection, we already have everything from eyewitness reports to collaborative efforts to email inquiries to webcasts. I think this is a good sign. Of course, our reporting is necessarily completely unevenly spread about different topics at this point, but hopefully, it will normalize over time. On a related note, the German Wikinews has also published a significant number of stories containing original reporting, mostly on very local topics. These aren't categorized as on the English WN, but they can be found through: http://de.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Whatlinkshere&target=W… I would be interested in hearing about the state of original reporting on other Wikinews editions. All best, Erik