On 08/07/2005, at 6:02 AM, Amgine wrote:
- Wikinews can balance 3a and 3b, and has done an admirable job of
doing so. However, it is important for editors to avoid focusing attention on doing "hard news"; Wikinews cannot (and should not try to) compete with main stream news media, and should play to its strengths of many people rather than big stories.
I don't at all want to get into the bigger debate, but given what we just achieved last night doing "hard news" I'd hate to say we think we can't compete with "mainstream news media". We and Wikipedia had more accurate information online about the London bombs faster than just about any other service I saw. Sure, we had some moments where the page looked like a mess as multiple people tried to solve logical problems of how to deal with so much information quickly, but those messes lasted about a minute as people realised what was happening and backed off.
It was an incredible experience, sitting here in Australia transcribing texts from press conferences that were airing, updating them and having someone else anonymously on the other side of the world add a headline and amend my 'spokesperson' to the correct name of the police representative.
We can do hard news and we should aim to compete with the mainstream news outlets.
Why on earth not?
phoenix
(just my $0.02) -- "If you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito" -- Dalai Lama