Wikinews:Water cooler/assistance/archives/2022/November


Can I write about missing news from the past?

I looked something up, and found no mention of it on Wikinews. Something important that happened on November 22, 2008. There are several good sources available about it having occurred. (I'm referring to A US drone strike killing Rashid Rauf, an Al-Qaeda operative who planned the unsuccessful liquid bombing plot as seen here on the "Real Stories" TV and Youtube channel.) My question is can I write a news article dated in the far past, so that when the date is looked up the news will be found, for wikinews as a historical record. Perhaps I could mark the article in some way as written a long time after the fact, but based on information from the time.

Other important news about that day have been covered: A second thrown grenade in Thailand injures 8, Somali pirates take 134 Filipino hostages, Saudi Islamic militants vow to reclaim their hijacked ship, and there's an interview with the "Commander" of "the American Nazi Party".

Other missing info for that day: American hip hop artist MC Breed died. King Herod's mausoleum had been definitely located. (In fact, my daughter, as a student, was part of that excavation. I even remember her calling me up and telling me about it!)

If not reporting about the past as an article from that day, would I be allowed to write a weekly or monthly summary, with a follow-up on news items, filling in missing parts, and telling what happened since? Of course that would be only for news from a week or month ago, not from years ago.

Thanks! Pashute (talk) 20:54, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Pashute:We don't do that - we always try to use what is available at the time of writing.
For freshness requirements, see Wikinews:Freshness, but we are more tolerant towards this in original reporting. For older topics, the best approach is to do an interview with a relevant person about it. - Xbspiro (talk) 09:18, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]