October 28, 2004, 1.45pm • 24 comments » • 1,114 Views

Get ready for WikiNews

Many have dreamt of this. Wikipedia, a free, open-source encyclopedia operating on a wiki, has become a massive success thanks to an army of dedicated authors and a publishing system that, despite the obvious risk of leaving every page open to modification by every single reader, remarkably encourages a high degree of integrity.

Now take the wiki model and apply to journalism, because the people behind Wikipedia are preparing to launch WikiNews:-

We seek to create a free source of news, where every human being is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere. We seek to promote the idea of the citizen journalist, because we believe that everyone can make a useful contribution to painting the big picture of what is happening in the world around us. The time has come to create a free news source, by the people and for the people.

Wow! There really is a revolution going on here. Folk have suggested the notion of wiki-driven, mass-produced news; now, it’s happening. I suppose it’s just another backend system for the kind of thing that OhMyNews is doing, but it’s been remarkably successful for the encyclopedia.

Wikinews will employ a staged series of steps in story production akin to that used in conventional newsrooms, but shared by groups of people around the world.

And Wikinews makes a big play of striving for neutraility, something the encyclopedia prides itself on. But I’d be interested to see how this pans out. Neutrality is a difficult enough concept in the world of professional, Big Media journalism (can any reporter ever be truly neutral to a situation, what *is* fairness and balance anyway, isn’t objectivity just a sweet impossible?) - but one can well imagine Wikinews stories on particular contentious subjects being written by authors with vested interests.

On the other hand, Wikinews promises, amongst other things, that “all factual claims have to be sourced”. This is taken for granted in the professional journalism - so why does it sound so revolutionary? One can also imagine citizen reporters contributing and fact-checking to the project with the same zeal that has made Wikipedia neutral, comprehensive and successful:-

Wikinews will adopt the key principles which have made Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia websites what they are today: neutrality, free content, and an open decision making process.

Peddlers of points of view and opinion will be booted off. Sounds to me like the reinvigoration of journalism, if it works.

Watching this pan out is going to be fascinating. You can shape the project by voting on what Wikinews will turn out like.