I want to explain one of the main reasons I went off wiki. I disagree with the idea of rehashing news. Sure, in some situations, it might be the only way to report a story, and in those cases I concede. However the amount of rehashing that we're doing now is just insane, and I think it puts bad light onto Wikinews.

Wikinews lacks a local angle (there's no locality)

I agree 100%, and ideas to rectify this problem have been circulated since before I was a member. In some events, we've been able to cover with a local angle, I believe recently we covered the riots in London. This isolated incident should become the normal. Why can't we cover something like "Cyclone in Bay of Bengal kills at least 17" on our own? I'm going to being up the idea of Wikinews Bureaus, once again, and question we've never started one. (I might be able to start a test bureau, but would probably be a different topic)

In response to the topic-at-large, I have no problem with Wikipedia's "In the News" section. Like stated before, I believe the section and Wikinews have two different things. I would love it if "In the News" editors jump the boat to Wikinews, but I see no reason to force them to do so.

#Terin


On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Brion Vibber <brion@wikimedia.org> wrote:
El 5/26/09 4:28 AM, Fred Bauder escribió:
> Wikipedia needs to do what is good for Wikipedia, and some news coverage
> is good for Wikipedia. Detailed original reporting is outside Wikipedia's
> mission, as is a sophisticated presentation of the significance of news.
> As things happen, information about them is added to the corpus of human
> knowledge and thus added to Wikipedia.

Wikinews does relatively little to really support firsthand reporting
either. I'll admit I'm not a hardcore Wikinewsie, but what I've seen
over the last years has generally been either:

* Original interviews
or
* Re-reporting of news stories in other media

Look at today's top stories:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Trial_against_Church_of_Scientology_begins_in_France
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/North_Korea_conducts_test_of_nuclear_weapon
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Obama_nominates_Sonia_Sotomayor_to_U.S._Supreme_Court
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Cyclone_in_Bay_of_Bengal_kills_at_least_17

All four are just rehashes of information found at other news sites --
the sources are all media news outlets: CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Reuters, etc.

There is an original reporting section:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Portal:Original_reporting

but the stories are relatively rare, and even many of those seem to be
basically "a public event happened, here's a description" or "a press
conference happened, here's some info".


Wikinews lacks a local angle (there's no locality) or a unifying
political angle (we're supposed to be neutral), either of which could
make it much easier to organize original reporting. Compare with say
Indynews, which has a strong political angle and has been much more
active about providing infrastructure. Editorial quality sometimes
suffers, but I at least feel like they've got a mission...

-- brion

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