In early December 2011, I had the pleasure of meeting Brian McNeil at GLAM Camp, Amsterdam where I was representing the History of Paralympics in Australia GLAM project. At the time, we were busy working on finalising the details for Wikimedians to the Games (W2G), an opportunity for two Wikimedians to attend the London Paralympics with behind the scenes access to the Games in order to cover them for Wikipedia and Wikinews courtesy of a press pass. This project was to be funded by the Australian Paralympic Committee and Wikimedia Australia, with the credentials being provided by one of these two organisations. To my knowledge, it was the first time a GLAM project had heavily involved Wikinews in a collaboration incentive programme. Certain types of GLAMs lend themselves better to Wikinews, Wikisource and Wiktionary than Wikipedia, and this was just such a case. No one else has really done this. Thus, terribly exciting for me and others inside Wikimedia Australia and the Australian Paralympic Committee.

We built into the W2G a requirement that participants write an article for Wikinews. In the process of meeting Brian at GLAM Camp and further conversations, I was even more excited. Reporter accreditation is seriously cool in terms of providing additional incentive to participate, especially for photographers. News stories go to Google News when published. You can cover topics in ways different and more meaningfully than you can on Wikipedia. The writing process as described is rather accessible for those who aren’t used to or don’t like Wikipedia’s formalistic, citation heavy editing style. It has useful help pages that don’t require digging 20 subpages into to find out how to edit within policy. The admins are accessible to request editing assistance from. This makes Wikinews accessible to a greater audience. I’m sold. I love using Wikinews for W2G and plan to encourage members of Wikimedia Australia to contribute. I plan to leverage Wikinews when I work with Australian sporting organisations to get them involved with WMF projects, because Wikinews is very useful tool.

Have I mentioned I loved Wikinews with out having published a story on Wikinews? About two and a half weeks ago, I decided to change this. I had permission to bring a photographer to test matches between Australia’s women’s national water polo team and Great Britain’s team. I bought a very nice camera after the second of five matches. I had notes I’d taken during these matches that included the score, attempts to identify player numbers by what other match attendees had told me, had several conversations with people attending the matches about what was going on. I could not record who scored how many goals and this information was not on a scoreboard.

After the fourth of five matches, I started drafting the article. I finished writing after the fifth and final test match. Writing for Wikinews felt as easy as I thought it would be. There were a few bumps along the way because I didn’t clearly read the instructions: Titles should be short, neutral and in active voice. Ooops. I moved changed the title after I created, and it was changed twice again to make sure it conformed with policy. The lead sentence is very important. It should be, according to the guidelines, interesting and answer the who, what, where, when, why and how questions. This was difficult for me. I required and received help from two other editors to get the lede into shape. The article needed to be three to four paragraphs long. I focused the first paragraph on answering the W questions. I used the last paragraph to provide box score information for all five matches. The second paragraph was a problem. I did not know what to say. I asked for help on the article talk page, on a user talk page and in the IRC channel. People told me I could write about how well the team performed. The second paragraph included these details. With the help of the regular writers, the lede paragraph became two paragraphs. The article finished with four paragraphs. I double checked the text to make sure it matched with policy: The text was written in active voice. Dates were expressed as yesterday, Sunday, last Tuesday instead of 21 February 2012. I created links to Wikinews and Wikipedia pages for relevant topics on the article.

Laura Hale's first Wikinews article, on the site's main page

In preparing the article, I did original reporting. I read the policy page, asked for more help on the talk page and followed the directions. I tagged the article with original reporting. I wrote reporter notes on the collaboration page. No scanning of hand written notes was required. I wrote down notes from my iPhone, paper and pictures I took. I wrote these notes in about 10 minutes.

In preparing the article, I also relied on other sources. On Wikipedia, you source every fact after you write the fact. On Wikinews, you source facts at the end of the article and fewer are required. Individual scoring information came from sources I used. This was cited at the bottom of the article.

On English Wikipedia, you include an image with out citing who took the picture. As I went through the final checklist, I discovered I need to attribute the photographer in the image caption. I did that. Everything on the checklist looked good. I clicked the submit for review button. I went to bed. I woke up and found the submission had been approved. The article appeared on the main page.

Writing for Wikinews is easy. Follow the guidelines. Request help if you are not sure. If you do this, you should be able to get your news article published.  Here’s my article, slap-bang on the main page; try getting that sort of exposure on Wikipedia!