Wikinews:Writing an article

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Anyone, including you, can write for Wikinews! All you need is an Internet connection, access to a web browser (which we can assume you have if you're reading this), your time, effort and willingness to learn a few easy skills.

Contents

Before you begin

Is your story news?

Check that the story you have in mind is appropriate material for Wikinews to publish. The Wikinews content guide serves as the arbiter of what is acceptable and what is not.

Has your story already been covered?

First, check the Main Page to see whether the story you have in mind has already been covered in a published article.

If not, check the list of Developing stories on the Main page or in the Newsroom to see if your story is "in production".

Articles on news events that are anticipated (such as the death of a notable figure) are sometimes developed in advance, at Wikinews:Story preparation. Check if your story is covered there.

If you do find a story covering the event you're interested in, then you can help to finish it.

Starting out

If the answers to the above questions are "Yes" and "No" respectively, then just type a headline (such as London Postman bites dog) for your article in the box below and click "Create article" to begin writing the article. These guidelines will help you create an acceptable and effective headline.

At this point, you will see a page with a textbox that is empty except the {{date}} tag that looks like:

{{date|{{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTDAY}}, {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}}

This tag adds a dateline to the article and also automatically categorises the article as one published on that date. Don't worry about the strange codes in it, when you save the article these get turned into Month daynumber, year, eg. August 29, 2006.

Adding the {{Develop}} tag to the article indicates that your article is in development (i.e. not ready to be published), and serves as an invitation to other editors to help expand and improve the article.

Essential steps

These are steps an article must go through to be published. However, no one editor needs do all these steps alone! You can do as little or as much as you want — the wider community of editors may well take up your story where you leave off.

Wikinews articles are written using the "wiki markup" for formatting and presentation. You can see Help:Editing for guidance on using the Wiki markup or use the toolbar above the editing box to add formatting. Even if you are not familiar with the markup, you can still write the article in plain text and someone else will do the markup - Collaboration!

Meet content guidelines

Your story must be fully sourced - every statement in the article must be backed up by a source published elsewhere. The only exceptions are the obvious ("Paris is in France" and "Putin is President of Russia") and for Original Reporting (see below).

It must also comply with the neutral point of view — that is, the article must represent all sides of a story fairly and in an unbiased way.

Wikinews articles should not infringe on the copyright of any other work. So copying portions of text from other sources into a Wikinews article is usually not acceptable, and in some cases, even rewriting the content of another source is not sufficient. It is best to gather information from multiple sources and put them all together in your own words in the article you write. See Fair use for more information. Please do not publish an article until it has multiple sources, or there is agreement among editors that more sources are not available and article is not a copyright infringement or that article includes original reporting.

Write in 'news' style

News reports are typically written in a certain way in the majority of the English language news media. These "style" conventions stem from common sense, tradition, evolution and research. Wikinews, too, follows such conventions, which are listed in the Style guide. Try to ensure that an article meets these guidelines.

Some news events are easily comprehensible only to those who are familiar with its background and context. Wikinews has a global audience. To ensure that anyone, anywhere can understand the report, include such background and context as is necessary.

List your sources

The sources you have used for the article must be listed in a separate section at the bottom of the article. (You can create such a section by adding the following line at the bottom of the article -
==Sources==

A cited source will appear like this:

To format your source in the above style, use this template:

*{{source
 |url    = insert_url_here
 |title  = insert_title_here
 |author = insert_author_here
 |pub    = insert_publisher_here
 |date   = insert_date_here}}

To be clear, the fields are url, title, author, pub(lisher), and date.

Per the style guide, multiple sources should be listed newest to oldest. If any source is missing one or more of the template's fields, leave a blank space after the "=".

Original reporting?

If you are writing your article using notes you took yourself "in the field" rather than using other published sources, read Wikinews:Original reporting for guidance. Then add the tag {{Original}} at the bottom of a page, and leave detailed notes about the original reporting on the discussion page.

Add categories

Every article needs to be listed under one or more categories, for it to be easily found even after it has dropped off the Latest news pages. Categories also enable articles to be listed on appropriate regional and topical "Portals".

Typically, both a "location" category (where did the news event take place?) and a "topic" category (what is the event about?) is required. Available categories are listed in Wikinews:Archives/Topic and Wikinews:Archives/Region.

Add them using this syntax: [[Category:<insert category name>]].

Publish the article

Once your article meets all the above requirements, replace the {{Develop}} tag with the {{Publish}} tag to "publish" your article. This will automatically list your article on the Main Page.

Optional steps

Avoiding edit conflicts

To avoid edit conflicts you might first want to insert the {{editing}} tag and then save your story. This tag is a request to other editors to refrain from editing the article, since the "tagger" is rewriting substantial portions of the text and therefore any other edit is very likely to result in an edit conflict. Use this tag only when it is really necessary, and be sure to remove it as soon as possible. Remember that Wikinews articles are not "owned" by any of its editors, and anyone else is meant to be free to contribute to any article.

Add images

You may wish to add images to your story. Even if none are available from the actual event, it can be helpful to the reader if you add a graphic of some sort, perhaps a map, or some icon representative of event features. Ensure that the images are not copyright infringements - as explained below.

Use the Reference desk to find images to upload, or take your own photos too (see digital camera), or even draw your own pictures (using a free program like the Gimp, for example).

If you want to upload public domain images, use the Commons image, sound and file library. Use this link to go directly to the upload page. You will need to register on the Commons if you have not already done so.

You can only upload 'free' (as in 'free to be redistributed at will') images on the Commons. You can upload 'fair use' images directly to Wikinews. Thoroughly read the fair use guidelines before uploading a picture to Wikinews; if you picture does not meet the fair use guidelines, it will be deleted. If your image is allowable, use this link to upload images to Wikinews.

Continuing coverage

Have a look to see if there is a suitable Infobox that could be used on your story.

You might also find a suitable template to add to your story on Template:Issues. These will automatically put appropriate graphics on your story and place it in the right categories.

Add links to Wikimedia Projects

Adding wikilinks is encouraged. Many subjects such as countries and politicians have their own pages that link to the Wikinews category or portal.

You can add links to other Wikimedia Projects when necessary.

  • You can link to Wikipedia using [[w:Pagename|]]. I.e. [[w:biodiesel|]] produces >biodiesel.


An example news story

Heavy lift Delta IV rocket launch problems is an example of a well-written Wikinews article with all the important elements required present. See also the Wiki markup or "source" of the article.

See also

Retrieved from "http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Writing_an_article"
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