Wikimedia Fellowships/Project Ideas/Wikinews syndication fellow

The purpose of this fellowship is to try to turn Wikinews into a successful project by establishing relationships with other online and print news organization and convincing them to syndicate original Wikinews stories, and by helping the Wikinews community identify and produce original stories that other news organizations would be eager to syndicate.

Rationale

Wikinews is in a Catch-22. It lacks the quality and quantity of news coverage to be of much interest to readers. But without an audience, it's not easy to attract contributors. (And of course, without more contributors, it can't reach the level of news coverage that would draw readers.)

This fellowship is an attempt to inject outside readership into that cycle. Wikinews stories are licensed liberally to allow easy and free syndication. Anyone is free to reprint Wikinews stories using the CC-BY license (which doesn't even include the copyleft SA provision of other Wikimedia content). However, little to no significant syndication is going on.

By developing relationships with traditional and other news organizations and making them aware of the opportunity to use Wikinews content, and by recommending high quality and relevant original stories as they are being written by Wikinewsies, the Wikinews Syndication Fellow will (hopefully) be able to bring substantial readership to the original Wikinews reporting that deserves it. That potential for readership (and legitimation by established news organizations) will in turn be an incentive to draw more contributors to Wikinews.

If successful, this strategy could push Wikinews towards viability.

Idea submitted by

Ragesoss 16:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Prospective fellows

Would you like to be considered for a fellowship to work on this project?

If you'd like to take an active role in this project, either alone or in a team of fellows with complementary skills, please add your name below. Note that in order to be considered for a fellowship, you must also submit an application to the program.

Your name here!

Endorsements

This section is for endorsements by Wikimedia community volunteers. Please note that this is not a debate, vote, or poll, but is rather a space for volunteers to describe in detail why they think a project idea is of value. If you have concerns or questions rather than an endorsement to make, please use the idea Talk page. Endorsements by volunteers willing to work in collaboration with a fellowship recipient on a project are highly encouraged.

I'd love to see similar fellowship proposals for all the sister projects, but especially wiktionary, wikibooks, wikisource -- a fellowship(s) that would e.g. offer community support (collecting bug and software requests, helping map out a future path for these projects); supporting production of help and marketing materials, etc. -- phoebe | talk 17:28, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly what I was thinking. News is the most natural thing to syndicate, but whatever solution is best for news ought also to be part of a comprehensive strategy to disseminate all Wikimedia content. I want to increase awareness of Wikinews but it sounds like your strategy is just to give the project more attention in general. Can you be specific about areas of focus which are priorities? Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:45, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]