Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2012/October

Talk:No-bid contract for security review of IRS facilities mismanaged (working title)

Regarding comments that this news article is "stale": How is a government audit which has a conclusion that paid risk assessment survey of most US IRS facilities was not done effectively NOT be considered news? Yes, it was published in July, but please find me a post, webpage, or news story on it anywhere. A major part of this news story is that this audit was not noticed or was ignored. That's a news story all in its self. What I consider to be stale news is taking 2 or more news stories already written and summarizing them and publishing them a few days after everybody else. Wikinews has the chance to actually BFREAK an important story but is too tied up by policy and guidelines to actually do effective jounalism. - Stillwaterising (talk) 04:38, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Looking at this article, the review is correct. Something dating back to 2010? This sounds like something for Wikipedia. This news is THREE YEARS out of date. If this no-bid contract was awarded recently, the first paragraph should make this abundantly clear and it doesn't. Can you tell me why this story that appears to be THREE years old is news now? --LauraHale (talk) 00:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikinews is a Joke

I came here to publish a legitamate unpublished news story. I now find out that this is not possible. The chances of me coming back here to contribute are about nil. - Stillwaterising 22:50, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikinews is a powerful and versatile tool. Like any powerful and versatile tool, one has to learn how to wield it effectively. You've been offered information about how the project works. In my experience, people who decide they want to fail at Wikinews, generally succeed in doing so. --Pi zero (talk) 23:59, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

@ Stillwaterising , A joke is a matter of opinion. I learned how to write Wikinews. It took me about 5 to 10 articles to begin to feel like I understood how to do it well enough. And that's the issue: If you want to write "legitamate" news stories not published elsewhere, you need to learn the style guide, learn neutral point of view, learn the format and write for it. At the London Paralympics, we managed to publish 70 pieces of original research, including several extensive interviews, that were not done by other news organisations... but this wasn't easy: It took a lot of work on the part of those of us doing reporting on the ground to master the style. Stick around. Learn the style. People rarely succeed on their first try. --LauraHale (talk) 00:21, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

• Would you like a critique of your attempted contributions?

There were numerous attempts to explain what was required to deal with the story you wished to tell, and how to make it newsworthy. You ignored them, and soldiered on with an approach that might work on Wikipedia, but does not work here. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)