Wikinews project debuts
December 4th, 2004 | by Tim Wilson |From the creators of Wikipedia comes Wikinews, the latest attempt to rethink traditional media and publishing. Like Wikipedia, anyone can contribute to the news articles that are written on the Wikinews site. Is this journalism? I’m not sure that matters to the Wikinews contributors. From their mission statement:
We seek to create a free source of news, where, provided that we can overcome the digital divide, every human being is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere. Wikinews is founded on the idea that we want to create something new, rather than destroy something old. It is founded on the belief that we can, together, build a great and unique resource which will enrich the media landscape.
Compiling a wiki-based encyclopedia is daunting enough, but creating a timely, relatively unbiased news source in wiki format will be a huge challenge. It should be noted that some news-like articles have been written for Wikipedia such as the article on the Ukrainian presidential election. The coverage at Wikinews is must less thorough at this point which is not surprising given the much larger audience that Wikipedia has at the moment.
I don’t think the development of Wikinews on its own has much to do with educational technology, but it does suggest that the wiki wave has yet to crest. The potential is certainly there. Imagine social studies students creating their own wiki about current events, science students writing their own textbook, and journalism students moderating and editing a school-wide news wiki. It’s about collaboration, and wikis are about as collaborative as it gets.
Seen at Slashdot.
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