James D. Forrester wrote: Ah, OK, I didn't know that. I still maintain that press-badge-generating bureaucracy will be easier to penetrate with Wikinews as an excews - er, excuse :-) - than Wikipedia.

You are correct, but who will issue the Wikicredentials to show p-b-g bureaucrats? If it is automatic ("This is to introduce HindBrain, a certified Wikireporter since [[2 November]] [[2005]]") then anyone with access to the web can get credentialled and hang out in the press pavillion noshing on the caviar that is customarily served to reptiles of the press. It will turn into a rort. Peter (Skyring)

WikiNews has a policy (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy) which seems to work. Not everyone is a Wikipedia (or WikiNews) editor and not every editor gets accreditation - just those who get a consensus on application. The big benefit would be closer photographer access to events and photo-opportunities, resulting in photographs which aren't subject to the usual restrictions if we source them elsewhere. Peter (Skyring)

On 11/4/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote: We've had this discussion quite a bit on Wikinews -- accreditation does you little good unless a press pass is also issued by whatever event/organization/governmental agency you wish to cover. Some have discussed a meta press corps -- would the bar be higher there than on Wikinews? Our concept of an accredited wikinewsie is still citizen journalist. This is a radical concept, of course, and I'm not sure the world is ready to deal with it. -N.

In the same wiki-way that everything else works here. The community decides who, based on their contributions, is able to present a professional face to the real world and a useful contribution to Wikipedia/WikiNews. I use "professional" here in the sense of "adhering to industry standards", rather than "being paid for". I don't know how it is in other countries, but in Australia journalists aren't licensed. Anyone can be a journalist. Freelancers are common. As noted previously, Wikipedia is gaining a certain measure of respect and exposure in the general community. We don't need to sell our encyclopaedic credentials, just our audience. Nobody considers tabloid newspapers to hold to high standards of journalistic integrity, but they command wide readerships, and their journalists find little difficulty in gaining access to events. All we really need do is say "Google such-and such a subject" and Wikipedia is generally in the first ten entries, so we've got that sort of leverage to use with people who are after media exposure. And realistically, it's a win-win situation. We get information and (most importantly) free-use photographs, and the organisation or event gets web exposure that they just can't buy. Peter (Skyring)