After the successful wikinews vote http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Vote
the board has discussed and decided to move forward with this project!
In order to continue to work towards as broad a community consensus as possible, we are launching this at http://demo.wikinews.org/ and invite all interested parties (particularly the "no" voters) to come and help work on the site.
We will be keeping the site demo-only until November 22 at least, and at that point evaluating the next step. (Probably to launch en.wikinews.org)
The demo has not yet been publicised widely, and my hope is that an extended demo might convince those who voted against the project to change their views, or to come and influence the project now in a direction that overcomes or alleviates the legitimate objections that have been raised.
This will also give people more of a chance to discuss the proposed policies before the site goes live.
The one thing I want to personally stress right now: this is at this point a pure wiki. We can make of it what we wish. All of the proposed policies are just that: proposed policies, and we should strive to organically create policies that solve actual problems as they arise, rather than trying to a priori make a lot of rules that could constrain us in the early days. This formula worked well for wikipedia: common sense and flexibility.
Be Bold.
--Jimbo