More on Wikinews
One of my readers is waiting patiently for me to chime in on Wikinews.
I still haven’t sorted my thoughts out. When I was walking the other day, I thought of a great post to write about it, but by the time I got to a computer, it was magically gone.
Here are other people’s thoughts he’s probably already seen:
- David Weinberger finds it interesting, but raises concerns about their attempts to be neutral.
- Rebecca MacKinnon has a long post pulling the thoughts of others into a mix with her own. She expresses concerns over the motivations of those involved in the project and also questions whether it can be neutral. (Check out her great photo!)
- sj, of course, has several posts on it. Be sure to read Ethan Zuckerman’s comment and sj’s response, too.
Rebecca wonders who would contribute to Wikinews, who would have the time to do it, and why s/he would want to do it. I could envision some of the budding journalists I know getting involved in such a project. It could be a great way for someone to experiment with the field or maybe add to a portfolio, even if s/he doesn’t get a byline.
My local community has horrible community newspapers. I could easily imagine someone writing for Wikinews because the local news outlets don’t cover things someone thinks are important and worth recording or that what they cover is presented with such an obvious bias, hardly anyone presents them as objective sources. Also, there’s so much news and so few outlets, it’s easy for me to imagine a plethora of noteworthy news appearing in Wikinews.
Another reason someone might want to get involved is just the idea of recording things for history. Think about the value of primary source materials now, things people never thought would be useful. A number of people are constantly aware that recording any history is important and will do what they can to add things to the historical record.
I think there will be a demand for such news, especially from certain regions of the world. Think about how popular weblogs from Iraq have become because certain people think the media coverage inadequately presents events and daily life in that war torn land. How different could our perception of countries like North Korea, Rwanda, Sudan, or Mexico be if we knew we were reading reliable first-hand accounts of news there, news that wasn’t going through a “will this earn revenue” filter first?
It’s late. I’m too tired to finish reading everything tonight, let alone responding to it. More later, perhaps.
