[Foundation-l] FW: [Wikinews-l] Proposal for the creation of a Wikinews foundation

[Brian McNeil]

Only sent to Wikinews-l, forwarding to foundation-l

-----Original Message-----
From: wikinews-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikinews-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brian McNeil
Sent: 22 August 2007 13:11
To: 'Wikinews mailing list'
Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Proposal for the creation of a Wikinews foundation

I think we have a long way to go to firm up what we're actually doing here,
and what the organization should have as a remit. However, what may - to my
thinking - exclude non-wikinews journalists is NPOV. I believe that any
organization that is set up should adopt that as a core tenet.

I am not aware of the detailed technical differences between a union and a
non-profit, but to me it appears that a union's objective is to represent
its members' interests, a non-profit is to represent its goals. So, whilst
you could set up a non-profit with the goal of representing its members that
is putting the non-profit goals on shifting sands.

So, to consider the idea of including citizen journalists outside the
Wikinews community, I believe the association with WMF should require an
adherence to NPOV. This *will* exclude a lot of excellent reporters who
write good editorial and opinion pieces. Is there any way we can be
inclusive of these people if they clearly label online work as opinion or
editorial when it doesn't meet NPOV? A key issue for me would be getting
bloggers to work within the WN NPOV framework to produce an article then
doing their opinion/editorial introduction to the "neutral" story.

Going back to what we call this, I tried all the http://www.wju.org
(Wikinews Journalists' Union) acronyms I could think of at short notice.
Only free one was http://www.upj.org - Union of Pajama Journalists. :)


Brian.


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