Thanks edit

Thanks for making the audio version of UK government formally launches same-sex marriage legislation in Parliament. Great work.

It'd be fantastic to get the Spoken Wikinews going again, and perhaps have it as a podcast people could subscribe to. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I've had a look at the Spoken Wikinews and the News Brief, and if it were possible to get the News Brief going again then I'd love to help out with it.
I definitely think the podcast idea is a good one - I'm sure people would like to hear the news each day/week. Anyway, feel free to contact me if you want any help with anything or would like to include me in the project. -- Chris (talk) 15:43, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've done Spoken Wikipedia recordings — w:File:John Locke.ogg for instance. I've got a reasonably good microphone and have done live audio production in the past, so I might help out with some of the audio recordings in the future. It'd be nice to get to a point where all the articles are being recorded. As a comparison, I subscribe to BBC Best of Today as a podcast. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:50, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
What would be good as well would be to find some way of being able to listen to audio recordings on iPads and other mobile devices. -- CalF (talk) 20:37, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
Does that not work on iPads? It works on my Nexus 7 just using the Dolphin browser app. Although, while it won't fix the Spoken Wikinews problem, we could submit the News Briefing to iTunes as a podcast, so iOS users can get it. -- Chris (talk) 20:49, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
Unfortuately it doesn't work on iPads :-( If we could find some way of making it available to iOS users, whether through iTunes or another medium(I've heard youtube mentioned a few times) that would be good. -- CalF (talk) 21:19, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
YouTube would be a good idea for it too - we could, if we gathered enough interest, produce some sort of video output (like a weekly digest show or something) - but that would require a bit more effort each week. (I wouldn't mind helping with that though - I have quite a bit of video experience.) However, we could also use it for audio and keep the output simple. I still don't quite know how we'd tackle the problem of spoken articles being viewed on iOS, but I definitely think that an iTunes podcast, YouTube show/podcast or other method is a great idea for a weekly news briefing/digest. -- Chris (talk) 22:12, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, the simple solution is for a trusted Wikinewsie to set up a place to host the files as MP3s as well as OGGs, and to have an XML feed to put into iTunes. YouTube is okay, but that doesn't mean people can listen on portable devices like iPods and other MP3 players quite so easily. —Tom Morris (talk) 00:00, 28 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
That would also work. I am able to do that, but I don't know how much trust you want to put in me as a Wikinewsie :P I've got unlimited hosting (from a hosting company) and my own (although not so fast) server, so if you want to use my space for anything then you're more than welcome :) -- Chris (talk) 15:54, 28 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Review edit

Don't try to make an audio of an unreviewed article. Articles get changed relatively freely during review, it's a cornerstone of review that this is possible, so the audio has to be assumed to be invalidated during review. --Pi zero (talk) 20:20, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ah, fair enough. Sorry about that :) I'll re-record it when the article gets out of review. Thanks for the heads-up. -- Chris (talk) 20:26, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter - Edition 1, June 1, 2013 edit

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

Issue 1 - June 1/2, 2013

The Wikinewsie Group News edit

Since mid-April, supporters of The Wikinewsie Group have been quite active, doing a number of activities in support of the organization. These include selecting a provisional board, engaging in research projects, working to support original reporting, discussing setting up off-line events, and promoting our efforts and the broader work being done by Wikinews reporters.

  • On May 4, a meeting was held to select the provisional board. It was decided that the board would be composed of the following people: LauraHale (Chair), Pi zero, Brian McNeil, Bjarki, ProtoplasmaKid. The total number of people and roles was based on the draft bylaws. 18 people, a little under half of all people who were listed as supporters, attended the meeting. aff-comm has been advised of this, and that we are ready to discuss the group's bylaws with them. They have responded back to indicate their review will start shortly.
  • Tentative steps are being taken to have a Wikimedia conference in Iceland with a Wikinews workshop as a component of it. This would likely be in December to coincide with the 10th birthday of Icelandic Wikipedia. Having some discussions about the possibility of having a small Wikinews conference somewhere in Europe sometime in the next year.
  • Wikinews:GLAM was created after writing about previous experiences with GLAM projects on English Wikinews and content related to GLAMs across all projects. Hopefully, with groundwork underway, there should be two announcements about Wikinews and GLAM projects by the end of June that will build upon previous success.
  • It does not look like there is a single presentation about Wikinews at Wikimania in Hong Kong has been approved. Given that, plans are to have some sort of Wikinews meetup while there independent of the official tracks.
  • Efforts are underway to do a better job at translating articles from one language to another, and successfully guide them through any local review processes. This is not a one way street of material from English Wikinews to other languages: We have successfully had two articles start on Spanish Wikinews that were translated to English Wikinews, where they passed the local review process and were successfully published. Comments on this effort are welcome at The Wikinewsie Group/Project planning and User talk:LauraHale: WORTNET.
  • Efforts are underway to develop a matrix to understand key policy, community and content requirement differences between different Wikinews projects. Once complete, this should ease cross Wikinews collaboration by having a starting point to discuss content related issues when translating for review, and trying to standardize any policies across projects.
  • Four pieces of research have been completed. They include Blocks on English Wikinews, Wikinews:GLAM/Coverage, Research:Wikinews Review Analysis and English Wikinews and the Gender Gap. If you are doing any research, formally or informally, about any language Wikinews project, please share it with The Wikinewsie Group as it will help better inform our decisions.
  • The development of a reviewing tool for English Wikinews continues. There are some concerns that the future roll out of Lua may hinder this. Once complete, this tool should make it easier for reviewers to leave feedback and check articles against all criteria.
  • Migration of the wikinewsie.org server to Iceland should be complete by the end of June. Once funding is secure, one of the first upgrades to the server will be to create a secure server and a dedicated host in order to encourage more investigative reporting and reporting of embargoed news stories. The server could also be used for development of bots, and mobile reporting tools. The planning is being done to give The Wikinewsie Group cloud space to host reporting notes, video and audio to support journalism efforts.
  • Icelandic Wikinews and Malayalam Wikinews are both hosted on incubator. The Icelandic Wikimedia mailing list and Indian editors have been contacted to encourage local editors to get the projects viable to move to the main space.
  • On social media, a few The Wikinewsie Group supporters are answering questions about Wikinews on quora. This is part of an effort to expand awareness about the Wikinews in general.
  • Follow @wikinewsie, The Wikinewsie Group on Twitter. Please tweet us any original reporting you are aware of on any project so we can tweet about it.

Original reporting edit

This list is May 1 to May 15.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано.
Norwegian
See also: Førstehand, Publisert.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale.
Chinese
See also: 原创报导, 已发布.
Catalan
See also: Reportatges originals.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published.

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter - Edition 2, August 5, 2013 edit

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News

There is less to report, as the group spent time focusing on behind-the-scenes aspects of obtaining thematic organization recognition.

Aff-Comm application status updates
Education and GLAM
Technical updates
  • Pi zero has moved to a new phase in the development of an improved reviewing tool for English Wikinews.
  • Gryllida is working on the development of a tool to make translating material from one project to another easier. The new beta wmtrans translation tool here, which you can use to translate Wikipedia and Wikinews articles from one language to another. Its difference from the Meta translation tools is include the the ability to translate an article as a whole, per-paragraph, and add new paragraphs if desired; a dictionary box for you to look up geographical names without loading entire Wikipedia pages; and whole-page translation philosophy instead of translating by parts. The tool also features a multilingual interface; you can add new sections to data.ini to add your own. You are encouraged to send them, and bug reports, to Gryllida.
  • Discussions have been going on behind the scenes about the potential for The Wikinewsie Group to support the technical aspects for Wikinews project development following suggestions on Wikimedia-l that this would be a place chapters could demonstrate leadership potential and work with the Foundation. There are currently a number of developers active in the Wikinews community.
Research
  • Given feedback by a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board (Samuel Klien) that the English language project should consider content import from other free news sources as a way of increasing community participation, content output and traffic, research was done inside the community using another language project as a baseline to determine the potential impact in terms of achieving those goals. A copy of this research can be found at Research:Wikinews Content Import Analysis. In a nutshell, the findings are: content import did not result in increased community output or increased community size. Content import also resulted in fewer page views per published article. Content import was not successful at achieving a positive community or traffic related impact.
  • A tiny piece of research done examining relative article popularity by year on English Wikinews can found at Article rank and article date. More in-depth research along these lines may produce interesting results.
Across the languages
  • Over on Italian Wikinews on July 25, they hit 30,000 total pages.
  • English Wikinews completed elections for their Arbitration Committee. Brian McNeil, Pi zero, Mikemoral, LauraHale, RockerballAustralia, and William S. Saturn were elected to the one year position.
Content work
Clips:
Other news
  • Two members of the The Wikinewsie Group provisional board attend the IRC meeting on July 26 for the Program Evaluation and Design as the board begins to think about and conducts its own evaluation of efforts to increase content and increase community participation. They observed the August 1 metrics meeting.

Why Wikinews? Editorials on why people support and contribute to Wikinews projects

Wikinews Original Reporting

The following is a list of all original reporting done on Wikinews projects from June 1, 2013 to July 31, 2013.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Portuguese
See also: Reportagens originais, Publicado. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale, Pubblicati. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Chinese
See also: 原创报导, 已发布. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Esperanto
See also: Originalaj raportaĵoj, Publikigitaj artikoloj. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter - Edition 3, September 1, 2013 edit

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 3, September 1, 2013
Education and Research
  • On English Wikinews, there is work to make some educational videos to assist users in understanding how the review process works, and how to write an article using screencast. Videos created so far include: A review of an English Wikinews article to let people see how that looks. , A walk through of an article being written for English Wikinews to let people see how one person writes an article., A walk through of creating an article on English Wikinews with a Doctor Who related news story as an example.
  • A few of the provisional board members had intense discussions about the preferred research practices to inform key decision making in regards to developing the most effective programming with the goals of 1) working with educators to instill core journalistic values, 2) engage in quality original reporting that can be shared across projects, and 3) improve the diversity and quantity of the current contributor base to Wikinews projects. The ideal research often depends on context, but that in doing on project related work, action research is probably the ideal as it is an outcome improvement driven approach.
  • In further regards to research methodologies, three of the provisional board members read The art, science and mystery of nonprofit news assessment by the Investigative Reporting Workshop. This document discusses some of the challenges non-profit related journalism sites have in assessment as it pertains to their own reporting. A discussion was also held regarding the issue of information anonymization when it comes to any research being conducted by The Wikinewsie Group using on Wikinews publicly accessible information, content and data. Sources looked at and discussed included Researching the public web and Forum Guide to Data Ethics. There is a feeling by some of the provisional board members that the WMF, through the Grants programs and the Program Evaluation and Design group need to provide greater guidance regarding what sort of information collection and analysis is expected, what privacy guidelines will be expected, what will be publicly expected, what will be privately expected, if these match and how to handle any discrepancy between these guidelines. At the same time, documentation for the WMF as it pertains to outcomes needs to be clear as to the audience and objectives in conducting the research. These issues become vitally important as increasing contributor output research differs from research focused on providing an environment to encourage best practices for journalists, with a goal of bringing more educators to the project to assist in accomplishing this goal.
  • Brian Keegan talked about newswork on Wikipedia from a Wikipedia perspective (that ignores definitions of news) and failed to acknowledge the importance of original reporting and citizen driven journalism in his negative critique of Wikinews. At the same time, he failed to acknowledge the lack of investment by the Wikimedia Foundation in supporting Wikinews and other sister projects in strategically growing and supporting the Foundation's mission.
Technology
  • Given the issues with spying on government listening to communications, Scoop will be 'deprecated', and the recipients list trimmed back progressively have the membership list culled to make sure only reviewers and accredited reports have access to reporter notes for story verification. A new mailbox will be set up for incoming material that needs the attention of reviewers. [1]
  • On English Wikinews, a draft has been started at Wikinews:Visual Editor to let the Visual Editor team know some of the issues involved in working on bringing VE live to the project. This is vitally important to be done right and that VE works with the only main entrance point to writing new articles, because if done without considering the gateway, it would create massive technical problems that would like make it impossible for article review for publication to be completed.
  • On English Wikinews, efforts are underway to see about using DPL to sort images by date and to better highlight featured articles that appear in a category by calling them out seperately. This is likely to be a long term, wikignome type activity. [2]
  • A bug was fixed in wmtran, the translation helper tool, to correct URLs of preview wiki-links. Relevant contact information is now also available at the tool page header.
Reporting
  • On English Wikinews, there has been a substantial amount of original reporting done in the past 18 months that involved the uploading both local multimedia and multimedia to Commons. An effort is underway to categorize these images locally better highlight the original reporting of the multimedia including type. It will also provide easier access for reporter to file photos for re-use in other articles. The major category work was done on 2012 Summer Paralympics.
  • Following Jimmy Wales's speech at Wikimania, The Wikinewsie Group reached out to him via e-mail to see how we could work with to accomplish his stated aims in the context of our proposed organization. There are a number of shared goals, including making it possible for Wikinews contributors to do original reporting full time on the project. Susequently, he has been engaging in dialog with several English Wikinews reporter on his Wikinews talk page.
  • A survey has been created to better understand the existing original reporting costs associated with current Wikinews production. Reporters across all languages who have contributed to original reporting on any language Wikinews project reported on in our newsletter have been pinged on their talk pages asking them to complete the survey. Three different language projects have been notified of the survey on Facebook. The survey has also been linked to on Twitter. The goal of the survey is to be able to understand the value of original reporting, where money is currently being spent and by whom, and to have data that will better enable The Wikinewsie Group and project volunteer reporters to apply for grants related to conducting more original reporting. Survey results are currently being processed with a plan of having some research published for reference in the next newsletter.

Opinion pieces

For our next newsletter, we are encouraging Wikinewsies to define news and how Wikinews provides it.


Original reporting

The following is a list of all original reporting done on Wikinews projects from August 1, 2013 to August 31, 2013. Includes a new language edition, Serbian Wikinews.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Serbian
See also: Изворни извештај, Објављено. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale, Pubblicati. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Esperanto
See also: Originalaj raportaĵoj, Publikigitaj artikoloj. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Catalan
See also: Reportatges originals, Notícies publicades. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.
German
See also: Wikinews:Originalbericht, Veröffentlicht. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.

The Wikinewsie Group News : Edition 4, October 1, 2013 edit

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 4, October 1, 2013
Aff-Comm
  • The Bylaws review by aff-comm started in early September.[3][4]
Wikimedia Foundation
Research
  • Wikinews original reporting value as a measure of news events was published. This is the first in a series of research pieces looking at the cost of original reporting done by Wikinews journalists.
  • The second piece of research about Wikinews reporting was published, Itemizing the cost of Wikinews reporting. It was not published on the research namespace on meta because it has little application for chapters and thematic organizations as a whole, except possibly in trying to determine how to evaluate budgets submitted by Wikinews reporters for the purposes of grant making.
Education
  • On English Wikinews, supporters of The Wikinewsie Group requested the installation of the Education Program extension. This will facilitate having university courses participate on the project and make it easier for TWG to work with other groups like the Wiki Education Foundation.[6][7] The extension was installed and as an example and way to engage new contributors,a course for new reporters was created. Feedback on the course or anyone interested in running a high school or university course on Wikinews is encouraged to get in touch with The Wikinewsie Group.
Original reporting
  • Media accreditation has been attained for the 2014 Winter Paralympics. Planning is underway to insure the success of the original reporting event[8] and build on the success of the 2012 Summer Paralympics.[9] Success at the 2014 Winter Paralympics will go a long way towards helping The Wikinewsie Group secure accreditation for the 2016 Summer Olympics. If any individuals, chapters or thematic organizations are interested in assisting us with this and integrating it into existing outreach efforts to people with disabilities, please get in touch Laura Hale.
Outreach
  • A discussion took place on IRC about how Wikinews's definitions of journalism are very much tied into the workflow for Wikinews. [10] Thus, for many Wikinewsies, it is difficult to discuss the concept of what journalism is in a project context without it being seen as a fundamental discussion on project workflow. When people come in from the outside and offer advice, they are often seen as fundamentally criticizing the project's workflow without having any conceptualization they are doing that while fundamentally acting in good faith. In working with outsiders who are offering assistance, there needs to be a better method of articulating that the two, definition or journalism and Wikinews workflow, are one and the same. This could theoretically assist in less hostility, and enabling greater shared understanding that will allow participants to talk with each other instead of past each other.
  • Wikimetrics may be useful for assisting people in measuring education program impact, GLAM related programming and other outreach endeavors. For projects with flagged revisions or where articles are deleted/userified if they do not get published, the only really useable current available metric is pages created. Any analysis using this tool should wait until all content has been delete/userified because of too many false positives that suggest content was published when it was not. Additional information can be found at Programs:Resources.
  • Several language Wikinews projects which tweet out links other than to their news archives have started tagging their articles with the local language word for Wikinews. This makes it easier to find their reporting content, and for others to retweet their content. The Wikinewsie Group Twitter account made this request to better promote the work being done by local projects.


Technical
  • Wikinewsie.org e-mail is being cleaned up. All e-mail boxes which are 100% full have been deleted. Users who have set their accounts to forward to "untrustworthy" sites have been cautioned against doing so or those rules have been modified and reset with random values by the server administrator for them. People are reminded they should not be forwarding their e-mails to Google or Yahoo accounts. A strong possibility exists that this implementation may have been overly zealous so if a user is experiencing difficulties, please get in touch.[11]
  • Three potential technical projects for Wikinews were listed on the possible projects for mentorship programs on Mediawiki. They include a request for a mobile reporting tool, a mobile Wikinews application, and a machine assisted translation tool. [12]
  • Server upgrades and fixes continue for the Wikinewsie server. Details available here.
  • The wmtran tool has a new interface translation, to German, thanks to Huon.
For reporters
  • Reporters are encouraged to get an orcid, which can be displayed on their userpage. (Example) This could be useful in improving chances of getting grants, getting recognition for your reporting and promoting your work.
  • The Wikinewsie Group is looking for New York City based Wikimedia contributors who would be interested in getting published on Wikinews with the goal of getting media accreditation to the United Nations.[13] Please get in touch with Laura Hale or pi zero if you would like more information.


Original report

All original reporting done across Wikinews between September 1 and October 1, 2013. If this list is incomplete, please report that to Gryllida. Thank you to all Wikinews reporters and translators who have done original reporting. Please continue your good work.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Serbian
See also: Изворни извештај, Објављено. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Chinese
See also: 原创报导, 已发布. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.

The Wikinewsie Group News - Edition 5, November 8, 2013 edit

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 5, November 8, 2013
Project news
  • The Wikinewsie Group/Local Wikinews policies is the start of a guide that explains local Wikinews project policies with the goal of making it easier to recognise credentials across project, build on accumulated reputation from one project to another and facilitate translation work.
  • Historical Czech Wikinews experiment is a blog entry by Okino that looks at the community impact of allowing writers to write Wikinews articles from a past perspective, IE writing a story about a historical battle as if you were a journalist writing that article the day after it happened. The purpose was to attempt to make Wikinews more collaborative in nature and avoid the time constraints of the immediacy of news reporting. Okino shows that while the reaction to the idea was positive, the true interest in writing the articles of this type was small as the vast majority of them were written by him.
  • A conversation is taking place on Wikinoticias about allowing CC-BY-NC images to be locally uploaded.[14]
  • A conversation is taking place on English Wikinews with a WMF staff member about the future of search and potential special search features for Wikinews projects.[15]
Training materials
A video for new reporters who lost their first article on English Wikinews
  • A one page guide and a screencast were created that explain how to avoid plagiarism on Wikinews. Available data suggests this is somewhat of an issue for new and student reporters on English Wikinews, with roughly 10 to 20% of all submitted articles having some sort of copyright issue.
  • Training materials were created to better support new reporters wanting to produce photo essays. They can be found at Photo Essays for Wikinews, Photojournalist worksheet, and Wikinews Photo Essay Formatting. Assistance is requested in translating these to other languages and localizing them to local project requirements. This would be very helpful ahead of the Sochi Paralympic Games, where there are expected to be a number of photo essays produced.
  • Given the difficulty of new reporters being unable to get their first article published on Wikinews, a video was created to encourage these writers to stick with it. It can be found at The first time writing for Wikinews good.ogv. It is somewhat tongue in cheek, and tries to address the emotional implications of a not ready review. The problem of getting new reporters who are unsuccessful at getting their article published has been identified as a major area for work. It has a large impact on reporter retention.
Of interest for journalists
Education
 
EduWiki 2013 presentation
  • Provisional Chairperson LauraHale is made a presentation at the EduWiki Conference 2013 in Cardiff, Wales about educational efforts on English Wikinews. Findings she included that changes in reviewing practices between semester 1 and semester 2 for one university course saw similar improvements for new reporters. What is good for students is good for the whole community.
  • With the Education Extension[16] installed successfully on English Wikinews, a portal was started at WN:EDU[17] to encourage and provide training for educators to use Wikinews in their coursework. This is something The Wikinewsie Group is hoping to expand upon in the future, and plans to try to get translated into other languages. Plans are also underway to create a student portal to provide training for students. Many things to Sage Ross for his assistance in setting up the educator portal.
GLAM
 
  • The major GLAM work being done by a Wikinewsie at the moment is a Wikimedian in Residency with the Comité Paralímpico Español. A report was created this month for CPE based on interviews done in August. It can be found here.
  • Paralympic work being done with the US Olympic Committee is progressing.
Original reporting - summary

Between May 1 and October 31, when The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter first began tracking original reporting taking place across all projects, 227 stories have been published by 78 reporters 14 different language Wikinews projects. The projects with the greatest number of reporters engaged in original reporting were English with 15, Russian with 14, Polish with 13 and French with 10. Beyond these, original there were one or more journalists engaging in original reporting on Catalan, Chinese, Esperanto, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish and Ukrainian. The peak month for reporting across all projects was May with 52 articles. It was followed by June with 49, August with 44, September with 43 and July with 39.

 

In the past four months, Spanish, Polish, French, Ukrainian, Russian and English have all produced over 20 total pieces of original reporting, with Russian Wikinews publishing 41 stories and English Wikinews publishing 60 stories.

LauraHale, RockerballAustralia, Antanana, Agamitsudo, Dmitry Rozhkov, Plogi, Krassotkin, Schekinov Alexey Victorovich, and MadriCR have each produced 5 or more pieces of original reporting in the past four months. Another group of users, Joan301009, Bddpaux, Computron, Laslovarga, Fed4ev and Yakudza, have produced four articles each.

For September, only three pieces of 43 original reports produced were translated from one language to another. They were Wikinews interviews specialists on China, Iran, Russia support for al-Assad, Wikinews interviews Dr Thomas Scotto and Dr Steve Hewitt about potential US military intervention in Syria, Atlético de Madrid defeats Real Madrid 1-0 in 2013 derby and Tokio gana la sede de los Juegos Olímpicos 2020. Original reporting is a major strength of Wikinews. It is one we should be playing to. The Wikinewsie Group would like to encourage everyone to assist translating Wikinews work into another language, or finding a local reporter to assist with translating a work from where it was originally published into that language. This will benefit all languages, promote more cooperation between projects, and expand news reach for our reporting which we can leverage to provide more opportunities for reporters.

Original reporting output
Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Serbian
See also: Изворни извештај, Објављено. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Chinese
See also: 原创报导, 已发布. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.
German
See also: Wikinews:Originalbericht, Veröffentlicht. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.

The Wikinewsie Group News : Edition 6, December 2, 2013 edit

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 6, December 2, 2013

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The Group
  • Aff-comm recommended to the Wikimedia Foundation Board that The Wikinewsie Group be recognised as a thematic organization in early November.[18]
Education
  • Wikinews Education Program blog post was published on Wikimedia's official blog.
  • Discussions were had on IRC and Skype about the possibility of installing the education extension on Ukrainian, Czech and Korean Wikinews. While these could be used to potentially re-invigorate the local communities and provide a cohort of new contributors, the limited contributor base at the moment makes it difficult to implement. Greater partnerships would need to be done with chapters to provide people to assist local projects in running any education initiative.
  • What is news? handout was created to supplement existing training materials as this is an area where new contributors sometimes have issues on English Wikinews.
  • Documenting your original sport reporting was created to supplement Wikinews Original Sport Reporting. Assistance is requested in translating these documents into Spanish and Ukrainian.
Outreach
  • LauraHale attended Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2013 in Slovakia representing The Wikinewsie Group. She had conversations with people from several chapters about the potential to do things with TWG including the Polish, Estonian, Serbian, Czech and Ukrainian chapters.
Original reporting projects
  • The paperwork was submitted at the end of the month to send five Wikinews reporters to the Sochi Paralympic Games.
  • Attempts were made to secure media accreditation for the Commonwealth Games. The application was unsuccessful.

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Recent original reporting
Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale, Pubblicati. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Esperanto
See also: Originalaj raportaĵoj, Publikigitaj artikoloj. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.

Use of uninitialized value $dt2 in string at /usr/local/lib/perl/5.14.2/DateTime.pm line 1780.

German
See also: Wikinews:Originalbericht, Veröffentlicht. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.