Everything about Wikinews totally explained
Wikinews is a
free-content news source wiki and a project of the
Wikimedia Foundation.
Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from
Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an encyclopedia article."
The
neutral point of view policy implemented in Wikinews distinguishes it from other
citizen journalism efforts such as
Indymedia and
OhmyNews. In contrast to most projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikinews allows original work under the form of original reporting and interviews. The English Wikinews is the only Wikimedia site that grants press passes to reporters endorsed by the local community.
History
In January 2003, a two-line proposal under the title
Wikews was created on the
Wikipedia community's
Metawiki via an
anonymous post by Daniel Alston. He wasn't involved in the development of the project, and the proposal was redeveloped by German freelance journalist, software developer and author
Erik Möller. The proposal suggested the creation of a sister project covering "news on a wide variety of subjects, unbiased and in detail". Early opposition from long-time Wikipedia contributors, many of them pointing out the existence of Wikipedia's own news summaries, gave way to detailed discussions and proposals about how it could be implemented as a new project of the
Wikimedia Foundation.
In November 2004, a
demonstration wiki was established to show how such a
collaborative news site might work.
In December 2004, the site was moved out of the "demo" stage and into the
beta stage. A
German language edition was launched at the same time. Soon editions in
Italian,
Dutch,
French,
Spanish,
Swedish,
Bulgarian,
Polish,
Portuguese,
Romanian,
Ukrainian,
Serbian,
Japanese,
Russian,
Hebrew,
Arabic,
Thai,
Norwegian, and
Chinese (in that chronological order) were set up.
On
March 13,
2005, the English edition of Wikinews reached 1,000 news articles. Just a few months later in September 2005, the project moved to the
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.
On
April 29,
2006, the English edition of Wikinews reached 5,000 news articles. On
September 5,
2007, just over a year later, the English edition of Wikinews reached 10,000 news articles.
Additional projects
While Wikinews focuses primarily on text articles, members are expanding the site into other media. These projects include, which delivers
Ogg Vorbis audio files, and, which is a daily edition intended to be printed.
On
April 28,
2008 Wikinews also started the plans for which is aimed at a 24/7 streaming audio broadcast of various programs and news, mainly from participating Wikimedia projects.
Interviews
Wikinews reporters have conducted interviews with several notable people. The site reached a milestone when it became what is believed to be the first
citizen journalism news site to interview a sitting head of state. In December Wikinews interviewed
Israeli President and
Nobel Peace Prize recipient
Shimon Peres. Some other notable interviews have included writers, actors and politicians, such as
Augusten Burroughs, three U.S. Presidential candidates,
Tony Benn,
Eric Bogosian,
Nick Smith and
John Keys, and world wide web co-inventor
Robert Cailliau.
Wikinews has also had issues with maintaining a separate identity from Wikipedia, which also covers major news events in real-time. Columnist Jonathan Dee of
The New York Times has pointed out that "So indistinct has the line between past and present become that Wikipedia has inadvertently all but strangled one of its sister projects, the three-year-old Wikinews... [Wikinews] has sunk into a kind of torpor; lately it generates just 8 to 10 articles a day... On bigger stories there’s just no point in competing with the ruthless purview of the encyclopedia."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Wikinews'.
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External Link Exchanges
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