User:Cmwhite/archive

Draft proposal

I have been working on a proposal for Wikinews. I first sent something to the Foundation board, who kindly replied and suggested I put it up on the Proposals page. Since then, the details of the conference organisation have remained sketchy so I don't think this is going to be a formal proposal but hopefully it will be something we will look at at the conference.

The proposal is for a Wikinews ‘Special’ report section on a conference taking place in Kigali, Rwanda at the beginning of June. It would involve original reporting and interviewing conference participants. I should be coordinating a small team of young journalism students who will be reporting live on an international youth conference about genocide. The main aspect that makes it differ from just being a series of articles that we could post as news is that we hoped the reporting could be in English and French. If this project is a success, I would like to look at how Wikinews volunteers could run more projects like this, getting young people involved in reporting what’s going on around them.

background I’m part of a network called Never Again which works a lot in Rwanda. In June we are holding a conference which will engage young people from around the world in issues around genocide. My part of it is in organising a team of young Rwandans to run a news website and possibly produce a printed publication at the end of it. I have been looking for a suitable way to host it but am unsure of what computer equipment I will have there, so the Wiki interface would be accessible from almost anywhere. My plan was to have the team writing and editing each other’s work and this would also fit in with what Wiki does.

I also think our aims may be in harmony: other Never Again media projects seek to promote journalism and critical debate in order to build a society where genocide cannot take place, people are able to tell their stories and readers can be educated about issues such as HIV in a way that speaks to them.

This is what I think it would look like, but I’m not too sure how it will fit with Wiki as a whole:

• a ‘special’ news section of Wikinews from the conference in Kigali which would be created and edited both by my team and the Wikinews community as a whole
• the section would span both the English and French editions as we hoped to have reporters able to write in both
• The edition would have original reporting on our international youth conference on genocide in the second week of June: the conference should have some very high profile participants from the UN, international governments and the media.
• The conference will be ‘newsworthy’ in that we will be able to report new debate and ideas from experts on issues including genocide, media responsibilities, current problems in Rwanda and Darfur including the plight of widows with Aids, proposals for the future of the UN etc

The participants will need to face all the issues about neutral reporting that have been issues at Wikinews, particularly as they are writing about sensitive and controversial subjects like race and genocide. Responsible, neutral reporting is a big issue in Rwanda as the media was so involved in inciting/ignoring genocide and because it is so sensitive there are still problems with free reporting there. We will be working to an agreed constitution which will try to ensure reporting based on respect for human rights and tolerance.