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Amgine is not actively involved in the en.Wikinews project. Which is a far cry from saying Amgine has no opinions regarding the project.
Let's take a very brief critical look at the 27 May 2008 published articles, as they stood at 00h 28 May 2008:
- Florida teacher lets students vote to remove child from class
- A fairly classic human-interest, controversial story about kindergarten.
News value: *
Writing: **
- Football: Thomas Sørensen ready for new club
- A sports gossip story including weasel words (sources say...)and an unlinked inline attribution. Notably well-linked, except glossary terms are linked to Wikipedia rather than Wiktionary. For not-understandable reasons this article includes a Danish national nav box, as opposed to a Sports or Football nav box. Nationality trumps topic on en.Wikinews?
News value: **
Writing: ***
- At least 30 dead after bus crashes off cliff and into river in South Africa
- This breaking news article is admirably spare of verbiage; last edit 3 hours ago. The article follows inverted pyramid format, and is ready for further development. It is lacking relevant data - when, name of the river, name of the highway, owner of the bus, origination and destination, etc. - but is well on its way to being good local coverage. Title lacks specificity.
News value: ****
Writing: **.5
- Canadian foreign affairs minister resigns amid controversy
- A shallow and weak political scandal article, lacking vigorous writing and not examining the precursors or analyzing the events. Title is not fulfilled in the article. Includes Canadian navbox, does nationality trump topic on en.Wikinews?
News value: ****
Writing: *.5
- Google claims that lawsuit threatens Internet
- Terrible title. English usage in the article is poor—reads as though primarily written by esl author. Missing all kinds of data - where the lawsuit is filed, when, which specific entities or people are involved, why Google is the target of copyright infringement claimed against YouTube, etc. Best thing about this article: the Internet topic navbox.
News value: ***
Writing: *
- Long March rocket launches first Fengyun-3 weather satellite
- A limited technology article. Covers most of the facts. Lacks vigorous/journalistic writing style, and a bit short on sources. Yet again, national navbox but not topical.
News value: **.5
Writing: **.5
- 2008 Computex Preview: Three awards, One target
- Press release/advertisement. The 6 articles currently published about 2008 Computex—which hasn't even taken place yet!—are each of them unabashed promotions of the event. en.Wikinews is clearly being used to market someone's private event. I'm not wasting my time to even consider its journalistic and writing elements.
News value: 0
Writing: 0
- FIFA suspend Asian Soccer Champions Iraq
- Non-english title, and similar language issues in the content. There's a story struggling to be written here, but this isn't publishable. Lacking data, and the previously mentioned english problems...
News value: ***.5
Writing: **
So, what we have are two hard news stories, two topical stories, two sports/entertainment articles, a human interest/teaser, and an advertisement. Of these, the breaking news story and the human interest are the only ones which, after reading, the average person would be able to understand the content. In short, there's almost no news on en.Wikinews these days. And most of what is published is crap writing, or crap journalism, or isn't supposed to be there at all.
Posted by Amgine | 12:02 AM | Permalink | 0 comments
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