[Wikinews-l] Wikipedia's 'In the news'

[Terin Stock]

I want to explain one of the main reasons I went off wiki. I disagree with
the idea of rehashing news. Sure, in some situations, it might be the only
way to report a story, and in those cases I concede. However the amount of
rehashing that we're doing now is just insane, and I think it puts bad light
onto Wikinews.

Wikinews lacks a local angle (there's no locality)
>

I agree 100%, and ideas to rectify this problem have been circulated since
before I was a member. In some events, we've been able to cover with a local
angle, I believe recently we covered the riots in London. This isolated
incident should become the normal. Why can't we cover something like
"Cyclone in Bay of Bengal kills at least 17" on our own? I'm going to being
up the idea of Wikinews Bureaus, once again, and question we've never
started one. (I might be able to start a test bureau, but would probably be
a different topic)

In response to the topic-at-large, I have no problem with Wikipedia's "In
the News" section. Like stated before, I believe the section and Wikinews
have two different things. I would love it if "In the News" editors jump the
boat to Wikinews, but I see no reason to force them to do so.

#Terin


On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Brion Vibber <brion at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> El 5/26/09 4:28 AM, Fred Bauder escribió:
> > Wikipedia needs to do what is good for Wikipedia, and some news coverage
> > is good for Wikipedia. Detailed original reporting is outside Wikipedia's
> > mission, as is a sophisticated presentation of the significance of news.
> > As things happen, information about them is added to the corpus of human
> > knowledge and thus added to Wikipedia.
>
> Wikinews does relatively little to really support firsthand reporting
> either. I'll admit I'm not a hardcore Wikinewsie, but what I've seen
> over the last years has generally been either:
>
> * Original interviews
> or
> * Re-reporting of news stories in other media
>
> Look at today's top stories:
>
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Trial_against_Church_of_Scientology_begins_in_France
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/North_Korea_conducts_test_of_nuclear_weapon
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Obama_nominates_Sonia_Sotomayor_to_U.S._Supreme_Court
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Cyclone_in_Bay_of_Bengal_kills_at_least_17
>
> All four are just rehashes of information found at other news sites --
> the sources are all media news outlets: CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Reuters, etc.
>
> There is an original reporting section:
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Portal:Original_reporting
>
> but the stories are relatively rare, and even many of those seem to be
> basically "a public event happened, here's a description" or "a press
> conference happened, here's some info".
>
>
> Wikinews lacks a local angle (there's no locality) or a unifying
> political angle (we're supposed to be neutral), either of which could
> make it much easier to organize original reporting. Compare with say
> Indynews, which has a strong political angle and has been much more
> active about providing infrastructure. Editorial quality sometimes
> suffers, but I at least feel like they've got a mission...
>
> -- brion
>
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