[WikiEN-l] Is Wikipedia a News Portal (among other things)?

[Ray Saintonge]

geni wrote:

>On 9/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>  
>
>>I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering
>>everything.  I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent
>>news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover.  The
>>solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older
>>events more.  I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time
>>periods!  Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered
>>events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child
>>kidnappings?  What about the thousands of political scandals, major and
>>minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced
>>cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.?  It's all good info we're missing!
>>    
>>
>Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering
>your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick
>way to scan that.
>
This is a Wikisource function, but that dosn't make it easier.  I have 
most of the first 20 years of McClure's Magazine.  It was a monthly that 
became famous for muckraking journalism, and exposing the behaviour of 
big companies and government administration in the pre WWI era.  1,200 
pages per year for 20 years gives 24,000 pages, and is a daunting task.  
Weeklies and dailies don't make things any easier.

Ec