Wikinews:Wikinews needs you!

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Welcome all to Wikinews, the free news source written by you! Everything you read here is written by individuals just like yourself. You can edit any article — fix spelling mistakes, punctuation or grammar, correct mistakes or further expand the article!

Please note that if you have been involved in an event that you want Wikinews to report on, it may be more appropriate for you to request an interview with the Wikinews community. Requesting an interview is like holding a press conference.

What Wikinews articles are

First and foremost, Wikinews articles are written from a neutral point of view and don't contain opinion or commentary (if you want to tell the world what you think about a news item, try blogging.)

There are two main kinds of articles:

• Synthesis articles - articles written using information from other online news sources. "What does that offer that I can't get from, say, Google News?", you may ask. Simple — we can combine all the facts available from all sources about a news event into a single article for the reader's convenience, and we can present the information in a neutral manner — avoiding the bias that may be present in other news sources. Furthermore, we always cite our sources so you can check our work.

• Original reporting - journalism by Wikinews contributors themselves. You yourself can write the news by providing first-hand reports of a news event. We only ask that you take detailed notes and present them with your article to support your work.

All articles are a collaboration. No one person is the 'author', and everyone is free to edit any article, so long as the changes don't contravene our guidelines.

What we want from YOU!

We want you to write articles for Wikinews on topics that:

• You find interesting: If it's of interest to you, it will be interesting to many other people!
• You feel aren't getting adequate coverage: Do you know of an issue that has been forgotten or isn't getting enough attention in the rest of the press? Here's your chance to tell the world!
• Are important to you: The news you write can be about a global event or what's happening in your local town — we don't mind!

But we also want you to edit and expand the other articles you see here. Unlike in any other news source, when you see a mistake or something you know to be incorrect, you can fix it!

OK, get me started!

Read a fuller introduction to the site, Wikinews:Introduction.

For learning how Wikinews articles are written, see Wikinews:Writing an article

For a quick how-to on using the Wiki markup to edit Wikinews pages, see Wikinews:How to edit a page.

Ready to write? Go to the Newsroom, the heart of the site, to write new articles and edit existing ones.

Need to discuss with other editors or ask for assistance? Go to the Water cooler.

We also highly recommend that you create an account for use on Wikinews so that your edits and articles can be attributed to you.

Want to see some examples? Here are some of our best.