Wikinews tries to summarize all the major news of the day and, in the
process of doing so, will usually have to rely on existing sources.
This, as I have emphasized many times, is a useful service: it can
reduce bias, provide a synthesis of key facts from many different
sources, and contribute to a "news commons" that can be used by anyone
for any purpose, free of charge.
However, the real strength of Wikinews is that we allow and encourage
anyone on the planet to go out and report events that happen around them
from a neutral point of view.
They will almost certainly do so in their native language.
Hence, I consider it essential that we *systematically* translate
existing Wikinews stories containing original reporting into as many
languages as possible. To this end, I have started this project:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WORTNET
(Wikinews Original Reporting Translation Network :-)
If you speak more than one language, please sign up as a translator. You
can either actively go out and search for stories that contain original
reporting, or you can wait to be notified by others to translate stories.
I think this could also boost the number of stories containing original
reporting we publish every day and provide a more global perspective for
each of the projects.
So, your support in getting this off the ground would be very much
welcome. In addition to signing up, please announce this initiative in
your local edition. It is also essential that each Wikinews edition has
an original reporting template and category similar to this one:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template%3AOriginal_reporting
Please help to establish consistent standards for this. This makes it
possible to locate stories containing original reporting, and to clearly
identify the OR component (using a "/Notes" subpage; see template). In
the English version, I have also directly added a link to WORTNET, it
might be a good idea to do the same in the other languages.
All best,
Erik