Monday, April 25, 2005
News on News Reporting
Want to be a reporter and write, or perhaps edit, stories for international distribution? Well, you can do so from your computer by participating in a collaborative online news journal.
Last year, Wired News reported that :"After doing much in recent years to revolutionize the way an encyclopedia can be built and maintained, the team behind Wikipedia is attempting to apply its collaborative information-gathering model to journalism.
Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia's encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists. The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded."
So how is this new news form, Wikinews , doing now? According to this article, there are problems getting and publishing All the News That's Fit to Wiki :
"Nearly six months into an experiment to apply the collaborative, information-gathering model known as a Wiki to the deadline-driven field of breaking news, operators of Wikinews are finding their mission rife with frustrations and challenges.
The site, an offshoot of Wikipedia, the volunteer-maintained online encyclopedia, is facing pressures its parent organization rarely had to contend with, such as ferreting out fake posts, incorporating original sources and updating coverage to reflect rapidly changing current events."
The open source group expected Wikinews to be different from a mainstream journalism operation and that seems to be the case. It has many of the same top stories as bigger news outlets, as well as some that don't get top billing elsewhere. But I could say the same about Google News, which simply aggregates a lot of news reports from many sources around the world. One obvious difference between these two news websites is the quality of writing - Google gets good quality by linking to professional reports. Wikinews is very spotty in terms of grammar and spelling. Both have a tendency to publish some rather slanted or biased (myopic?) reports. But with Wikinews, you can try to fix the "slant" by "editing" or "discussing" the article in question. The contributers come from around the world; but not all regions or political systems are included. So they do have a problem getting balanced reports.
I think Wikinews is an interesting stab at opening up the middle ground between mainstream news media and blogs. It lacks the editorial coherence and control of a blog or of a mainstreamer but does have the blog attribute of many contributers to correct a story. And it has a lot of potential story writers to contribute the first draft and to edit it.
It will be interesting to see its progress over the next year. Progress that will depend on how many new "reporters" decide to participate.
Last year, Wired News reported that :"After doing much in recent years to revolutionize the way an encyclopedia can be built and maintained, the team behind Wikipedia is attempting to apply its collaborative information-gathering model to journalism.
Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia's encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists. The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded."
So how is this new news form, Wikinews , doing now? According to this article, there are problems getting and publishing All the News That's Fit to Wiki :
"Nearly six months into an experiment to apply the collaborative, information-gathering model known as a Wiki to the deadline-driven field of breaking news, operators of Wikinews are finding their mission rife with frustrations and challenges.
The site, an offshoot of Wikipedia, the volunteer-maintained online encyclopedia, is facing pressures its parent organization rarely had to contend with, such as ferreting out fake posts, incorporating original sources and updating coverage to reflect rapidly changing current events."
The open source group expected Wikinews to be different from a mainstream journalism operation and that seems to be the case. It has many of the same top stories as bigger news outlets, as well as some that don't get top billing elsewhere. But I could say the same about Google News, which simply aggregates a lot of news reports from many sources around the world. One obvious difference between these two news websites is the quality of writing - Google gets good quality by linking to professional reports. Wikinews is very spotty in terms of grammar and spelling. Both have a tendency to publish some rather slanted or biased (myopic?) reports. But with Wikinews, you can try to fix the "slant" by "editing" or "discussing" the article in question. The contributers come from around the world; but not all regions or political systems are included. So they do have a problem getting balanced reports.
I think Wikinews is an interesting stab at opening up the middle ground between mainstream news media and blogs. It lacks the editorial coherence and control of a blog or of a mainstreamer but does have the blog attribute of many contributers to correct a story. And it has a lot of potential story writers to contribute the first draft and to edit it.
It will be interesting to see its progress over the next year. Progress that will depend on how many new "reporters" decide to participate.
