Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2012/October

Fresh? How is news not news?

I wrote an article, it took an obscure IRS internal audit (no news release) that no news agencies, bloggers, independent researchers, nothing and nobody on the interenet that is indexed by Google wrote a single words on it. I find it, realize how newsworthy it is, plug in a some deliberately hidden information, such as the contractor's name, and try to post it here hoping that other people in this project would collaborate with me. Instead I'm simply told it's not fresh enough, try to make UTC)OR? "Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news" however news isn't news if only a handful of people know about it and the general public has no knowledge? Right? - Stillwaterising (talk) 10:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

• "As a response to the 2010 suicide attack on a regional IRS headquarters in Austin Texas, a no-bid contract was given to Unified Consultants Group Inc., a Georgia based disable veteran-owned logistical and engineering services company."

That's your wikt:lede, throw it away. The audience is asleep as it tails off.

You've gone a good deal beyond what The Other Place considers synthesis, but you've not attacked the story as a piece of investigative journalism. That would throw the story across the line into original reporting territory. Make some phone calls, submit a couple of Freedom of Information requests and, most importantly, remember you're not writing an encyclopedia entry.

Everything you've drawn from falls foul of the truism I coined regarding facts vs news; except, that is, how you're connecting them. The solution in such circumstances is to get someone who can be considered an authority on a subject to comment on your join-the dots; And, to put the whole thing together such that it makes a compelling read. I had to, after looking at the article a number of times, force myself to read it in its entirety; that's not a compelling read, this is, and an article that could've been written six months after the last publication mentioned it, and still been newsworthy. That's, in part, because comment was sought to get expert opinion. It's also relevant to note that, as you read through each of the first half-dozen paragraphs, you want to know more.

Writing here is far, far more of a solo effort than on other wikis; people won't sub those FoIAs, or make those phone calls, for you. They're what's going to take the article beyond a dry collection of facts which lacks newsworthiness. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)