Wikinews:GLAM/Case studies

Cultural institutions, specifically the traditional Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, are a group that could benefit from engaging with Wikinews and its reporters. The reporting on Wikinews is neutral, and fact based. Unlike other Wikimedia Foundation projects, it allows original content, known on projects as original reporting. Several Wikinews projects, including English and Spanish, have their stories feed out to Google News; this improves article visibility and views. Articles can get decent views, with a few interviews outperforming Wikipedia articles about the subject of the internet. In English Wikinews, an article can get comparable views to appearing on the front page of English Wikipedia as Did You Know. Wikinews article publishing often involves improvement on relevant Wikipedia articles and, for original reporting, images being uploaded to Commons for use on all WMF projects.

Wikinews GLAM projects

On English Wikinews, most of the GLAM work completed to date has involved cultural institutions affiliated with sports, including the National Sports Information Center, one of Australia's premiere sports related Libraries that is affiliated with the Australian Institute of Sport. Other work has been done with the Australian Paralympic Committee who have an extensive Archive of historical information on disability sport and disability culture in Australia. Other work has been done with the Spanish Paralympic Committee.

Australian Paralympic Committee

A Wikimedian in Residency program was established. The program resulting can be see at Wikinews:History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia.

Rollers and Gliders World Challenge

In July, the Australian Paralympic Committee asked if anyone was available to cover the Gliders & Rollers World Challenge in Sydney. The competition was the last domestic tournament for both Australian teams before they headed off to London. The APC wanted license acceptable pictures of the players for Commons.

Two Wikinews reporters volunteered, if funding assistance could be found as the event was several days long and required transport to get there and a hotel. The APC and the University of Queensland covered the costs as there was no time to request funding from Wikimedia Australia. Both reporters had previously covered several sporting events for Wikinews and had taken pictures at these events.

While the funding was secured, we had to set up the press passes on our own by calling Basketball Australia to set it up. Going into the event, the goal was to test some mobile reporting tools we planned to use in London. We had developed a tool for dropbox that allowed mobile uploading to Wikinews for notes. At the same time, the goal was also to see how Wikinews’s reviewers would cope with multiple articles being submitted for review in a short period of time. We were going to publish as many articles as we could. There were no plans to update Wikipedia articles at the time we did this.

Once there, a decision was made to cover games beyond the ones played by Australia in order to provide broader coverage, make our coverage less Australian centric, hopefully encourage contributors from outside Australia to cover their own Paralympians by providing news stories and pictures. Interviews were set up, with a focus on the new Australian players on the women’s team and two of the guys on the Great Britain team. This was set up through team management and the coaches as the Basketball Australia media guy was not present for this event.

Wikinews articles published for this event included:

Australia men's national wheelchair basketball team beat Japan 80-49 in final game of pool play – 425 views on peak day
Australia Rollers victorious against Great Britain men's national wheelchair basketball team – 280 views on peak day
Australian Gliders beat Germany women's national wheelchair basketball team on day two of Rollers & Gliders World Challenge – 223 views on peak day
Australian Gliders glide past China women's national wheelchair basketball team – 369 views on peak day
Australian Gliders squeak out first place victory over Germany women's national wheelchair team – 374 views on peak day
Australian Rollers roll over Great Britain men's wheelchair basketball team – 387 views on peak day
China women's national wheelchair basketball team tops Japan for third place at Rollers & Gliders World Challenge – 270 views on peak day
Wikinews interviews Australian Gliders Leanne Del Toso, Sarah Vinci, Amber Merritt, Clare Nott – 379 views on peak day
Wikinews interviews Great Britain men's national wheelchair basketball player Ade Oregembe – 266 views on peak day
Wikinews interviews Great Britain men's national wheelchair basketball player Joni Pollock – 215 views on peak day

2012 Summer Paralympics in London

The Australian Paralympic Committee provided two press passes for a pair of English Wikinews contributors. 3 IRC workshops were held in advance of the Games to teach people how to contribute to Wikinews and how to support Paralympic reporting.

20 English Wikinews articles were published about the 2012 Summer Paralympics in advance of the Games to teach others how to write for the project and to test how to use it in advance of on the ground reporting. English Wikinews broke one story before traditional Australian media: the Evan O'Hanlon and elite Paralympian sponsorship story.

While in London at the Games, a large amount of Wikinews reporting was done with 70 totals articles being publish. While in London, the pair published interviews on Wikinews with Amber Merritt in the Mix Zone, Tyan Taylor in the Mix Zone, Greg Smith in the Mix Zone, Claire Harvey in the Mix Zone, Michael Hartung, Paul Bird, Duncan Campbell, Trischa Zorn, Samoa Paralympic representatives, Vanuatu Paralympic representatives, Fiji Paralympic representatives, Tonga Paralympic representatives and Solomon Islands Paralympic representatives.

Following the Games, the reporters brought back a number of print materials for archiving at the National Sport Information Center.

IPC Nor-Am Cup

Following the London 2012 Paralympics, steps were taken to get in touch with the APC regarding the possibility of gaining media accreditation for the Sochi Paralympics. The Wikinews reporters were basically told that they needed to demonstrate competency in covering winter sport to gain accreditation from the APC. They were told by Steve Graham, the APC alpine coach, that the whole team would be at the IPC Nor-Am Cup in Colorado in December 2012.

The reporters indicated they would attend the event as this was a goal myself, another Wikinews reporter and a Commons photographer wanted to work towards. We contacted the APC, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Paralympics New Zealand to ask about setting up interviews and for more information on reporting from the event. A list of goals was created on English Wikinews at Wikinews:IPC Nor-Am Cup that the reporters wanted to accomplish while covering the IPC Nor-Am Cup. Articles published included:

IPC Alpine World Championships

In late February 2013, with assistance from the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE), an English and Spanish Wikinews reporter attended the IPC Alpine Ski World Championships. The CPE provided a list in advance of Spanish skiers competing and facilitated getting media accreditation. They also provided some print source materials for reference use. Wikinews related accomplishments as a result of this GLAM assistance include:

Two interviews conducted for English Wikinews, including one with a high profile Spanish personality who participates in the sport.
IPC Alpine engaging reporters on Twitter.
Over 13,000 views of Wikinews articles covering the event.
Experience gained on English and Spainish Wikinews for doing bilingual interviews by a member of the Spanish speaking community.
Produced more Wikinews and Wikipedia content, and shared more pictures than traditional media, which excludes Olympic specific news sites and NPCs.
Wikinews coverage of some skiers was the only media coverage they received during and for their participation in the competition. Examples include Ralph Green and Christopher Devlin-Young of the United States, Mitchell Gourley of Australia, Corey Peters of New Zealand, and Laura Valeanu of Romania.
20 English Wikinews articles published about the 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships.
3 Spanish Wikinews articles published.
1 article translated into Russian for Russian Wikinews.
101 para-alpine skiers photographed with their pictures uploaded to Commons. Average skier has 5.8 pictures of them.

Based on daily articles published with data current for 28-Feb, interest in a news article peaks on the first day an article is published. Unlike most new sources though, English Wikinews maintains article traffic at a higher level than more traditional media. Daily average views for the IPC Alpine World Championships on English Wikinews was comparable to daily views on English Wikinews during the London Paralympics and IPC Nor-Am Cup for similar coverage. 16 articles were published on English Wikinews and 3 were published on Spanish Wikinews in this period. Spanish Wikinews articles were published on 20-Feb, 22-Feb and 27-Feb. English Wikinews stories were published on 16 (1), 20 (3), 21 (2), 22 (1), 24 (3), 25 (3), 26 (3), 28 (1) of February and 1 (3) March. There were 13,756 views for event coverage on Wikinews between between 16 and 28 Feb.