This is a conversation that is ongoing and an effort to professionalize Wikinews - at least with regard to coverage of WMF stuff.

Brian McNeil

-----Original Message----- From: Brian McNeil [mailto:brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org] Sent: 11 May 2008 02:35 To: 'sgardner@wikimedia.org'; 'Mike Godwin' Cc: 'Cary Bass'; 'anthere@anthere.org'; 'Jay A. Walsh' Subject: RE: Wikinews reporting on WMF and projects

Sue,

I'd like to forward this on to Wikinews-l (a public list) and the scoop list for all accredited reporters; I mean this email in its entirety as well as my earlier email and your response which are below. I appreciate greatly that you've said I can share parts of your mail. It has placated Jason (DragonFire1024) to know that the two stories he's "lost" have prompted input from people like yourself to help professionalize Wikinews.

I'd like to think Wikinews has a bunch of people who *never* take themselves seriously, but take the job of reporting the news seriously. Some people are very earnest about it, Jason's article count is heading for four digits and this is one of the reasons why people are patient with him and cut him some slack. We weaned him off {{breaking news}}, but there's still that "got to be first" urgency to his work. This certainly colours his reporting, and since he's established a good relationship with the local cops, he's probably better to deal with in person than online. Or, at least, that's how I'd charitably interpret it. We need people like Jason, and for things like these two recent article deletions we need to keep Jason and co. onside; they need to know what is going on.

I give up trying to write a third paragraph. Let this be shared far and wide so I don't have to! :-P

Brian. -----Original Message----- From: Sue Gardner [mailto:sgardner@wikimedia.org] Sent: 10 May 2008 23:45 To: Brian McNeil; Mike Godwin Cc: 'Cary Bass'; anthere@anthere.org; Jay A. Walsh Subject: Re: Wikinews reporting on WMF and projects

Just jumping in to add: Mike is correct, I believe, about the need for a non-public space for Wikinews to develop stories. During the investigative process, reporters need to explore ideas that they end up not publishing - the basic process of newsgathering requires it. You talk to lots of people, pull together lots of material, and then enter into an evaluative period in which you assess everything you have, figure out what's verifiable/defensible, and then discard a lot of it for various reasons. During that process, you need a place to kick it around and assess it fully, pre-publication.

As I said on ComCom, Brian, I'm really interested also in helping Wikinews construct some guidelines or policies around covering the Foundation - both in my capacity as ED, and as a long-time journalist. At CBC.CA I had reporting to me a really excellent team of arts/media reporters, who frequently covered the CBC, which was not always easy. I also had a team of sports journalists who occasionally covered CBC's sports department - again, not easy. Both those groups faced conflicts between their roles as journalists and as staff members (the kind of thing I've seen you grapple with on ComCom), and we developed good policy to help them make their decisions.

Stuff like:

* When to honour embargos. The answer was "always, until and unless a competitive news outlet breaks the story." That's conventional for everyone: once any outlet breaks an embargo, the story is generally considered open to everyone.

* How to handle material you know only due to your status as an employee. The parallel for us would be when you, Brian, know something only from ComCom. At the CBC, we agreed that employees were free to use anything that was publicly available (even if it wasn't widely known), and anything they discovered themselves through ordinary journalistic work in which they had clearly identified themselves as acting in a journalistic capacity. And they could ask for permission to use material they know as employees, in a journalistic context. But in general, anything they knew only because they were employees (e.g., from internal memos, internal mailing lists), they were asked not to make public without permission from the organization.

* How to behave when covering your own organization. The biggest issue here was just to be very, very clear about which hat you were wearing - the employee hat or the journalistic hat. So for example when my head of arts journalism would call the office of the Vice President for comment on a story, he would clearly identify himself as acting in a journalistic capacity. When he interviewed me, he made it clear it was an interview, and not an employer/employee conversation. This is pretty straightforward, and I think Wikinews is already on a good path here.

* How to behave when leaked stuff by someone inside your own organization. This was tricky, but typically we treated leaked material from inside the CBC the same way we would treat leaks from anywhere, and we subjected it to the same scrutiny. What was the motivation of the person who leaked it? Were they willing to go on the record as the leaker, and if not, why not. Did they have personal grudges or biases. What was their self-interest, and what kind of agenda might we be playing into by pursuing the story. Etc.

* Would we write critically about our own organization. The answer here was yes. It was not easy for the journalists at CBC.CA to report critically about the CBC. They were good journalists, which required them to think critically. But they were also paid staff, and they didn't want to be unfairly limited in their career prospects in the organization due to their coverage of it. They also -on the whole- liked me, and didn't want to get me called on the carpet to defend their work. (Which happened many times, and I am grateful that their work was consistently good quality and left me nothing to apologize for.) The situation at Wikinews isn't exactly parallel, since the contributors are volunteers and are therefore much less personally dependent upon the Wikimedia Foundation's liking and support. In general, the considerations for Wikinews reporters covering the Foundation are probably fairly similar for any journalist covering anybody: if they are responsible and fair, they'll earn the respect and cooperation of the people and organizations they cover, even if their work is challenging. If they behave irresponsibly, over time they will find that people refuse to cooperate with them.

In general, our overarching goal at CBC.CA was to aim to treat the CBC the same way we would treat anyone else. This wasn't always easy, since journalists have a natural tendency to be much more interested than the general public in 1., their own organizations, 2., journalistic/media issues in general, and 3., people and issues they know a lot about. So we always tried to guard against our own natural tendency to navelgaze and obsess over ourselves.

This brings me to a final point re Wikinews. Media organizations develop, over time, an institutional scope and reputation. We know the New Yorker magazine covers a wide range of subjects in an intelligent fashion, and conducts meticulous fact-checking. We know that the New York Times also has a broad remit, and will try to cover a story thoroughly and well. We know that gossip blogs do not fact-check, and do not ask for comment or scrutinize their sources. We know that many media organizations have a political agenda, and do not attempt to be fair or objective.

Wikinews, because it is a collaborative process with no central authority, will have a hard time developing its institutional scope and reputation. Does it aspire to objectivity? Does it consider itself a training ground for future professional journalists, an investigative news operation (hard to do without plenty of legal support), an advocacy organization, or an aggregator and synthesizer of original reporting from elsewhere. What are its standards, what's its mission. This is all pretty unclear to me, and I think it will be hard for Wikinews to stake out a particular terrain, given the process by which it's produced, and given that it hasn't yet developed, I think, a critical mass of likeminded authors. Maybe it just means Wikinews will need to work harder, over a longer period of time, to develop consensus around who it is and what it does. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

This is a very long note! I hope it's useful Brian, and you can feel free to share it, or pieces of it, publicly or privately, with anyone you like.

Thanks, Sue

-----Original Message----- From: "Brian McNeil" brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org

Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 18:34:12 To:"'Mike Godwin'" mgodwin@wikimedia.org Cc:"'Sue Gardner'" sgardner@wikimedia.org,"'Cary Bass'" cbass@wikimedia.org,anthere@anthere.org,jwalsh@wikimedia.org Subject: RE: Wikinews reporting on WMF and projects

I see it, was composing a response to Dan when it came in.

If you think we should work on hammering this out on wmfcc-l, then I'll defer to your judgement. My thought this morning was that there are aspects of this that don't belong on any mailing list... leaks and the like being a concern.

What I think we need is the Wikinews code of ethics made up to an official policy and a sub-page or subsection specifically covering WMF news. There's a pleasure to be taken from it, Wikinews is growing up and we're starting to run into the questions more difficult than, "should I ply my girlfriend with a bottle of wine on the off-chance...", but many of our contributors are still at that stage in life.

Brian McNeil

-----Original Message----- From: Mike Godwin [mailto:mgodwin@wikimedia.org] Sent: 10 May 2008 17:56 To: Brian McNeil Cc: 'Sue Gardner'; 'Cary Bass'; anthere@anthere.org; jwalsh@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: Wikinews reporting on WMF and projects

Here's what I wrote to ComCom:

I think Wikinews definitely needs a backstop of people with professional journalistic training and also legal review of some sort.

The idea that you can post an incomplete or inadequate or false news story up on the site and then wait for people who happen by to fix it is a recipe for lawsuits -- the expensive kind, that the Foundation and Wikinews can't afford to defend.

What probably needs to happen is some kind of process in which initial versions of news stories are vetted before they're made publicly available for further editing.

--Mike

On May 10, 2008, at 3:57 AM, Brian McNeil wrote:

I have created a stub (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:WMF_Reports ) for development of a policy. So far all I've put in is the bit from Mike that if there's an ongoing legal case we need to run things past him. It needs a better name, [[Wikinews:WMF coverage]]? I don't know.

This could perhaps be rolled into

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Code_of_Ethics

, but I think it should be developed separately first, and in Cabal- esque secrecy. J It likely needs frank and open discussion among a small group with Mike chipping in when it is "illegal", "immoral", or "fattening".

Just to make sure everyone is up to speed on this, Mike has got me to effectively perform office actions and delete two articles in the past day or so. The first was the Bauer case, and the deletion is supposed to be temporary. The question raised on wiki about this one was "when is the case likely to be closed?" Basically, Jason (DragonFire1024) wants to be assured his work has not been in vain. As I left the article's talk page and commented on the deletion there - we got his classic, "Whatever." response. I've known Jason for a while, and this is best translated as "I can't argue with you, but I don't want to accept the point you're making". [Aside. Cary, are all young, testosterone-fuelled gay men like this? :-P]

The second deleted article was on Wikipedia containing sexually explicit content, and - again it was Jason - but this time he'd picked up on the Valleywag coverage and insinuations that Erik didn't condemn pornography strongly enough. This is why I've not brought Erik into the discussion, and would prefer he be kept out of it. I see Erik as a fellow European who perhaps doesn't have some of the prudish views that your stereotypical American is supposed to hold. Where the controversy comes in is that Erik may have expressed said "liberal" views without appropriate caution. Right-wing media - or sensation seekers (like Jason) - can paint a very nasty picture with a few ill-guarded words.

The Bauer case prompted me to email Jon Williams and Darren Waters at the BBC (respectively the world news editor and the technology editor). Basically I was asking Jon how BBC news handles reporting on the corporation. I have no response, but as the WMF servers are in North America Sue and Jay's experience on this with CBC may be more appropriate. Sue, I would not be in the least surprised if you know Jon professionally, if you can prod him to respond I'd appreciate it; looking at where the BBC seems headed I wouldn't be surprised to see them trial "BBC Wikinews" and my contact with Darren has been aimed at collaboration for Wikimania 2008. I do *not* want to see the BBC setting up their own wiki for grassroots news; I want to see them use us.

So, to get the ball rolling, let's start with the low-hanging fruit. Do we need [[WN:OFFICE]] as an equivalent to the same on Wikipedia? When I look at the page on Wikipedia, I see a number of potential issues with it conflicting with running a news site. The most obvious is privacy violations. News sites violate people's privacy regularly, although the better ones only do so when it is in the public interest.

For more long-term issues, one of the things that I think needs addressed is a private wiki for story development. However, I have grave concerns that MediaWiki would not allow the sort of fine- grained compartmentalization that this requires. If I start a story that I don't want in public view until ready I may want to restrict the people who can access it. By this, I mean finer grained than "all accredited reporters can access the wiki". Some are reasonably conservative Christians, I can see certain stories being ones I don't want them seeing until they're ready for publication. I have considered setting up a wiki on http://www.wikinewsie.org, but - to be honest - this is something I would rather see all rolled back into the Foundation. I'd hand over the domain in a minute if I thought there was a good structure ready to manage it.

To sum up the current situation I'd say Wikinews needs to become more professional. It can't do that without help from the Foundation. The project is maturing and starting to run into issues that were never thought of before. The people receiving this email (Sue, Mike, and Cary - with Florence and Jay on CC) are in the best position to give thoughts on this and help chart a course. I obviously need to keep the Wikinews community informed that progress is being made, mainly Jason, so can people responding to this mark parts of their emails which are quoteable?

Brian McNeil