On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 9:32 AM Joseph Seddon <josephsed...@gmail.com> wrote: > What are the examples of successful citizen news websites? > > What could we learn from them?
My sense is that the most successful ventures that could be described at least partially in those terms fall into the following categories: - blogging/analysis - advocacy - translation - newsroom/citizen collaborations I would mention especially: - Global Voices ( https://globalvoices.org ) which has done fantastic work sharing stories from around the world that are under-represented in commercial media. It includes volunteer blog posts and translations, and has been around since 2004. - OpenDemocracy ( https://www.opendemocracy.net/ ) which publishes many volunteer-contributed stories, typically from a social justice / human rights perspective. It has been around since 2001. - ProPublica's "Get Involved" page ( https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/ ) which routinely engages the public in the newsroom's investigations. I think translation is one area where Wikimedia could play a more active role, with the right partners, especially considering how much WMF has already invested in open source translation tooling. Perhaps there are ways for grantmaking to play a larger role, too, when it comes to supporting current events coverage in Wikipedia and beyond. I've always loved the grants to volunteers to support photo equipment, accreditation, etc. Might there be ways to expand such programs to support travel & equipment costs for individual photo and video-journalists towards the creation of CC-BY-SA content? Regarding Wikinews, I have no hope that it will magically succeed one day, but one observation: When poking at contributor statistics, I found it interesting that the global contributor numbers, meager as they are, are almost entirely sustained by Russian Wikinews, which does appear to have a continuous day-to-day publishing record for some time now. It would be interesting to know more about what's motivating those contributors. For non-Russian speakers, see here for the feed of 2019 stories, which is pretty impressive by Wikinews standards: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=w.wiki%2F3Q7 Perhaps Russian contributors to this list can share some perspective on what's been happening on the project and whether it's viewed positively or not within the Russian Wikimedia community. Warmly, Erik _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
