Neat Mesh of News and Wikipedia
“In the last month I’ve also been inspired by meeting Jimmy Wales of wikipedia.org which precisely illustrates how the collaborative, great unwashed web can create more value than ‘authoritative’ institutions,” writes stefan in the above post about the potential power of linking to Wikipedia’s content from the BBC’s News Online.
Some news sites already try to provide additional background about news content. My office tries to do that with Research Matters. I’ve seen links like that in other publications, as well.
One of the issues news librarians will be concerned about, of course, is the integrity and quality of the information being linked to. Also, if the BBC uses Wikipedia, that implies they’re endorsing Wikipedia as a good, quality, accurate resource. That implication would hold for anything the BBC or any other news organization selects.
Stefan opines about how News Online could do so much more with the tools of the Web. He also broaches an idea another news librarian brought to my attention: news organizations should do more to foster community and discussions about the news via their Web sites and other Web tools. The other news librarian read Dan Gillmor’s We, the Media, which covers that idea, too.
Thanks for sharing, Bill!
