[Foundation-l] 10+ English Wikinews stories containing original reporting published

[Erik Moeller]

Along with the 1,000 page milestone, another small milestone has been 
reached on the English Wikinews: The 10th article containing original 
reporting has been published. Since this has been one of a major points 
of contention when Wikinews was first proposed, I'd like to give you all 
a brief overview of the progress on this front so far. When we have the 
100th article containing original reporting, I'd also like to send out a 
brief press release.

First of all, I think all the original reporting stories we've had so 
far were responsibly written and reasonably well-researched. Reporters 
are encouraged by policy to publish their notes (e-mails, transcripts, 
etc.) for other people to check, as is common within real editorial offices.

The policy governing original reporting is at:

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

A list of all such articles can be found at:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Category:Original_reporting

The process for becoming an "official" Wikinews reporter is at:

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

What "original reporting" means in practice varies from case to case. 
Since there are only 10 such articles so far, it is reasonable to take a 
look at each of them:

1)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Cambridge_Planning_Board_approves_new_science_building_at_Harvard

What the reporter did: took photos of the construction site and the 
notice of public hearing.

2)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bright_object_falls_from_sky_over_northwest_United_States

What the reporter did: observe the object and describe his observation. 
(The report has also been confirmed through other sources.) Interesting: 
The report was first submitted through the 
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Submit_a_story interface.

3)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Unrest_in_Belize

What the reporter did: observe the protests, describe his observations, 
and take photos. (This was a scoop on the western mainstream media.)

4)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Report_urges_Kenya_to_ban_plastic_bags

What the reporter did: contact the US Film and Bag Federation and ask 
them for a comment on a proposed tax on paper and plastic bags.

5)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/New_York_Public_Library_opens_collection_of_275%2C000_digital_images

What the reporter did: contact the NYPL and Larry Lessig regarding the 
question whether public domain art can be encumbered with license or 
usage fees.

6)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Iraqi_elections_kept_low-key%2C_but_secure%2C_in_Paris

What the reporter did: observe the voting process and take photos of the 
polling stations.

7)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/GAA:_Westmeath_beat_Donegal_by_narrowest_of_margins

What the reporter did: watch a football game and write a report.

8)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/First_Swahili_office_suite_released_in_Dar_es_Salaam%2C_Tanzania

What the reporter did: conduct an extensive interview with project 
leader Alberto Escudero-Pascual.
/
/9)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Conference_discusses_the_credibility_of_blogs

What the reporter did: provide coverage directly from the conference and 
send it to other Wikinewsies via IRC who then summarized it in the article.

10)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Atlas_V_rocket_launches_with_Inmarsat_satellite

What the reporter did: watch a webcast of the launch and describe it.

---------

So in this small selection, we already have everything from eyewitness 
reports to collaborative efforts to email inquiries to webcasts. I think 
this is a good sign. Of course, our reporting is necessarily completely 
unevenly spread about different topics at this point, but hopefully, it 
will normalize over time.

On a related note, the German Wikinews has also published a significant 
number of stories containing original reporting, mostly on very local 
topics. These aren't categorized as on the English WN, but they can be 
found through:

http://de.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Whatlinkshere&target=Wikinews%3AAkkreditierung

I would be interested in hearing about the state of original reporting 
on other Wikinews editions.

All best,

Erik