Wikinews is a free-content

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the te ...

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

and a

project A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be ...

of the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

that works through

collaborative journalism Collaborative journalism is a growing practice in the field of journalism. One definition is "a cooperative arrangement (formal or informal) between two or more news and information organizations, which aims to supplement each organization’s re ...

through user-created content. Wikipedia co-founder

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American List of Internet entrepreneurs, Internet entrepreneur and former Trader (finance), financial trader. He is a Founders of Wikipedia, co-founder of the non-profi ...

has distinguished Wikinews from

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an encyclopedia article." Wikinews's

neutral point of view Neutral or neutrality may refer to: Mathematics and natural science Biology * Neutral organisms, in ecology, those that obey the unified neutral theory of biodiversity Chemistry and physics * Neutralization (chemistry), a chemical reaction in ...

policy aims to distinguish it from other

citizen journalism Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism, grassroots journalism, or street journalism, is based upon members of the community playing an active role in the pro ...

efforts such as

Indymedia The Independent Media Center, better known as Indymedia, is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seat ...

and

OhmyNews ''OhmyNews'' () is a South Korean online news website. It was founded by Oh Yeon Ho on 22 February 2000. The site's motto is "Every Citizen is a Reporter", which reflects its status as the first news website in Korea to accept, edit, and publi ...

. In contrast to most Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikinews allows original work in the form of original reporting and interviews. In contrast to newspapers, Wikinews does not permit

op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...

. As of , Wikinews sites are active in languages, with a total of articles and recently active editors (editors that contributed to the site in the last 30 days).

Early years

The first recorded proposal of a Wikimedia news site was a two-line

anonymous post alt=screenshot of 4chan's interface, an anonymous post on _b_.html" ;"title="4chan's /b/">4chan's /b/ imageboard An anonymous post, is an entry on a textboard, anonymous bulletin board system, or other discussion forums like Internet forum, wit ...

on January 5, 2003, on the Wikimedia community's

Meta-Wiki The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the eighth most visited website ...

. Daniel Alston, who edited Wikipedia as Fonzy, claimed to have been the one who posted it. The proposal was then further developed by German freelance journalist, software developer, and author

Erik Möller Erik Möller (born 1979) is a German freelance journalist, software developer, author, and former deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), based in San Francisco. Möller additionally works as a web designer and previously managed h ...

. Early opposition from long-time Wikipedia contributors, many of them pointing out the existence of Wikipedia's own news summaries, gave way to detailed discussions and proposals about how it could be implemented as a new project of the

. The domain name wikinews.org was registered on April 2, 2004. In November 2004, a demonstration wiki was established to show how such a

collaborative Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. The f ...

news site An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Going online created more opportunities for newspa ...

might work. A month later, in December 2004, the site was moved out of the "demo" stage and into the

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

stage under

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

. A

German language German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switze ...

edition was launched at the same time. Soon, editions in

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

, French,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, Swedish, Bulgarian,

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

, Portuguese,

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...

, Ukrainian,

Serbian Serbian may refer to: * Pertaining to Serbia in Southeast Europe; in particular **Serbs, a South Slavic ethnic group native to the Balkans ** Serbian language ** Serbian culture **Demographics of Serbia, includes other ethnic groups within the co ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, Thai, Norwegian, Chinese, Turkish,

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

, Hungarian,

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...

, and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

(in that chronological order) were set up. In September 2005, the project moved to the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution 2.5 license. On September 7, 2007, the English Wikinews published its 10,000th article.

Recent developments

In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation organized the Wikimedia Hackathon in Istanbul, Turkey, from May 2 to 4, bringing together the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects. Additionally, the Foundation announced a new AI strategy aimed at enhancing editor support through AI-assisted workflows, improving information discoverability, and facilitating the onboarding of new volunteers with guided mentorship.

Interviews

Wikinews reporters have conducted interviews with several notable people, including an interview in December 2007 with Israeli President

Shimon Peres Shimon Peres ( ; ; born Szymon Perski, ; 2 August 1923 – 28 September 2016) was an Israeli politician and statesman who served as the prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the president of Israel from 2007 t ...

by Wikinews reporter David Shankbone. Shankbone had been invited to conduct the interview by the America-Israel Friendship League and the

Israeli foreign ministry The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (; ) is one of the most important ministries in the Israeli government. The ministry's role is to implement Israel's foreign policy, and promote economic, cultural, and scientific relations with other c ...

. Other notable interviews have included writers, actors, and politicians, such as Augusten Burroughs, several 2008 U.S. Republican Party presidential primaries candidates like

Sam Brownback Samuel Dale Brownback (born September 12, 1956) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as a United States Senate, United States senator from Kansas from 1996 to 2011 and as the List of governors of Kansas, 46th governor of K ...

and Duncan Hunter, and others like British politician

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician and political activist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabine ...

, writer

Eric Bogosian Eric Michael Bogosian (; born April 24, 1953) is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian-American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended the University ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

politician Nick Smith, former New Zealand

prime minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

John Key Sir John Phillip Key (born 9 August 1961) is a New Zealand retired politician who served as the 38th prime minister of New Zealand from 2008 to 2016 and as leader of the National Party from 2006 to 2016. Following his father's death when ...

, World Wide Web co-inventor

Robert Cailliau Robert Cailliau (last name pronunciation: ajo born 26 January 1947) is a Belgian informatics engineer who proposed the first (pre-www) hypertext system for CERN in 1987 and collaborated with Tim Berners-Lee on the World Wide Web (jointly winni ...

drag queen A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses Drag (entertainment), drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate Femininity, female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have ...

RuPaul RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960) is an American drag queen, television host, singer, producer, writer, and actor. He produces, hosts, and judges the reality competition series ''RuPaul's Drag Race'' and has received List of awards ...

, and former Wikimedia Foundation executive

Sue Gardner Sue Gardner (born May 11, 1967) is a Canadian journalist, not-for-profit executive and business executive. She was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from December 2007 until May 2014, and before that was the director of the C ...

Criticism

Wikinews has been criticized for its alleged inability to remain neutral in perspective and provide verifiable, reliable sources. In 2005, Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of the ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

'', criticized the credibility of the project: McHenry was skeptical about Wikinews' ability to provide a neutral point of view and its claim to be evenhanded, saying that " e naïveté is stunning." In a 2007 interview given to Wikinews,

, at that time a special adviser to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation and former head of the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

's Internet division, CBC.ca, dismissed McHenry's comment, stating: Wikinews has also had issues with maintaining a separate identity from Wikipedia, which also covers major news events in real-time. Columnist Jonathan Dee of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' said in 2007 that "So indistinct has the line between past and present become that Wikipedia has inadvertently all but strangled one of its sister projects, the three-year-old Wikinews... ikinewshas sunk into a kind of torpor; lately it generates just 8 to 10 articles a day... On bigger stories there's just no point in competing with the ruthless purview of the encyclopedia."

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

Nieman Journalism Lab The Nieman Foundation for Journalism is the primary journalism institution at Harvard University. History It was founded in February 1938 as the result of a $1.4 million bequest by Agnes Wahl Nieman, the widow of Lucius W. Nieman, founder of ' ...

called "Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project." Lih wrote "it's not clear that the

process really gears itself towards deadlines and group narrative writing" and that "if you're trying to write something approaching a feature piece, it's much harder to get more than two or three people to stay consistent with the style." Lih considers Wikipedia's stricter "formula" for article composition an advantage in a large wiki with many editors. Brian Keegan wrote in 2019 that the Wikinews model of requiring approval before publication ultimately limited its ability to grow, especially compared to the more open nature of Wikipedia. Thomas Roessing wrote in ''The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies'' in 2019 about journalism on Wikipedia and Wikinews: "Many people turn to Wikipedia for more information after they received news from the

mass media Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

... There is a substantial danger of havoc resulting from hasty handling of information about an unfolding situation." Roessing presents the issue of a "citation cycle", where professional

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

s turn to Wikipedia for research, but the Wikipedia community goes to mass media sources for breaking news articles. Roessing writes about the problem of differentiating Wikipedia and Wikinews: "The quality and the speed in which Wikipedia responds to news is one of the challenges to Wikinews." Additionally, Roessing refers to an analogy made by author Matthew Yeomans: "Usually, Wikinews retells stories that were first published by Internet outlets of the traditional mass media (which also serve as sources for Wikinews' articles). This tends to result in "dull regurgitation of facts" as Yeomans (2005) put it."

Language editions

As of , there are Wikinews sites for languages of which are active and are closed. The active sites have articles and the closed sites have articles. There are registered users of which are recently active. The top ten Wikinews language projects by mainspace article count:

Wikimedia The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the eighth most visited website ...

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

API:Siteinfo. Retrieved from Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab

References

External links

* * Wikipedia:List of Wikinews sites * Wikinews Statistics {{Authority control American news websites Citizen journalism Creative Commons-licensed websites Internet properties established in 2004 Multilingual websites Wikimedia projects