Nobody from Wikinews is bothered whether or not Wikipedia will lift material verbatim or rewrite due to license issues. The key issue is a lot of contributors feel that Wikipedia does not see us as a credible source. Yet, some random online source that is a popular glorified blog will happily be cited. (Eg Slashdot).
Slashdot is not some random online source, it is one of the largest and oldest sites of its type. Nevertheless, I would never cite it for anything other than information about Slashdot, since it only reports existing news stories and links to them, so you can just cite that story.
As for citing Wikinews - we're always telling people not to cite Wikipedia, why is Wikinews any more reliable? I know you have a system of "publishing" articles, which certainly helps, but is it enough?