According to a Wikinews contributor cited byThe New York Times, Wikinews'sneutral point of view policy aims to distinguish it from othercitizen journalism efforts such asIndymedia andOhmyNews. In contrast to most Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikinews allows original work in the form of original reporting and interviews. In contrast to newspapers, the English edition of Wikinews does not permitop-eds.[3][failed verification]
As of February 2026, Wikinews sites are active in 31 languages, with a total of 1,764,717 articles and 755 recently active editors (editors that contributed to the site in the last 30 days). On June 28, 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation's Sister Projects Task Force submitted a proposal for closing Wikinews.
The beta version logo, used until February 13, 2005
The first recorded proposal of a Wikimedia news site was a two-lineanonymous post on January 5, 2003, on theWikimedia community'sMeta-Wiki.[4][5] Daniel Alston, who edited Wikipedia as Fonzy,[6] claimed to have been the one who posted it.[4][7] The proposal was then further developed by German freelance journalist, software developer, and authorErik Möller.[4] 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 theWikimedia Foundation.[8]
In September 2005, the project moved to theCreative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.[11] On September 7, 2007, the English Wikinews published its 10,000th article.[12] On June 28, 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation's Sister Projects Task Force submitted a proposal for closing Wikinews.[13][14]
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 theEncyclopædia Britannica, criticized the credibility of the project:
Above all, the central question about the Wikinews effort is its credibility. Making a newspaper is hard...Someone who wants to do it but doesn't really know how hasn't solved the problem by gathering a lot of other people who don't know, either.[25]
McHenry was skeptical about Wikinews' ability to provide a neutral point of view and its claim to be evenhanded, saying that "[t]he naïveté is stunning."[25]
In a 2007 interview given to Wikinews,Sue Gardner, at that time a special adviser to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation and former head of theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation's Internet division,CBC.ca, dismissed McHenry's comment, stating:
Journalism is not a profession ... at its heart, it's just a craft. And that means that it can be practiced by anyone who is sensible and intelligent and thoughtful and curious ... I go back to the morning ofVirginia Tech – the morning I decided I wanted to work [at the Wikimedia Foundation]. The conversation on the talk page that day was extremely thoughtful. I remember thinking to myself that if my own newsroom had been having a conversation that intelligent (I was offsite that day) I would have been delighted. So yes, [in my opinion] you absolutely have proved Robert McHenry wrong. And you will continue to.[26]
Wikinews has also had issues with maintaining a separate identity from Wikipedia, which also covers major news events in real-time. ColumnistJonathan Dee ofThe New York Times 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... [Wikinews] has 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."[27]Andrew Lih and Zachary M. Seward commented on the continuing issue in a 2010 piece in theNieman Journalism Lab called "Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project." Lih wrote "it's not clear that thewiki 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."[28] Lih considers Wikipedia's stricter "formula" for article composition an advantage in a large wiki with many editors.[28] 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.[29]
Thomas Roessing wrote inThe 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 themass media ... There is a substantial danger of havoc resulting from hasty handling of information about an unfolding situation."[30] Roessing presents the issue of a "citation cycle", where professionaljournalists 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."[30] 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."[30][31]
This sectionneeds expansion with: Why does the Russian version have many more articles than all others?. You can help byadding missing information.(January 2026)
As of February 2026, there are Wikinews sites for 36 languages of which 31 are active and 5 are closed.[10] The active sites have 1,764,717 articles and the closed sites have 2,151 articles.[32] There are 3,427,679 registered users of which 755 are recently active.[32]
The top ten Wikinews language projects by mainspace article count:[33]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg)
