Saw this first at Buzzmachine: Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing at the Guardian, finds the open-source news offerings of Wikinews to be wanting.

An excerpt from SimonWaldman.net:

I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this. In some circles it is pretty much blasphemy. And, there’s a fair chance that if I do actually say it, I’m going to get thrown off the net or something. But, just between you and I: Right now, Wikinews really isn’t very good.

Before I expand - two bits of background : first I should add I’m a huge fan of Wikipedia (particularly the way it covers news - see below); second I’m also a huge proponent of citizen journalism. But this fusion of the two simply isn’t doing it for me.

So what’s wrong? Well, look at it and be honest. Is there a story there that you haven’t seen elsewhere? Does it even half fulfill the ’service’ bit of being a news service? Not just that - if you look at it today - does it make you think that you really must come back tomorrow if you want to know what’s going on in the world?

Yes, they might have had a scoop or two but at the same time, they’ve also failed to cover hundreds of stories that happen every day - consistently presenting at best a handful of headlines that it would be easier to read elsewhere.

I want it to be great - but in a world of free news sites, blogs, newsreaders and rss feeds, I can’t quite see what it’s bringing to the table. Even when it starts to fill up some of the many gaps in its coverage.

To learn more about wikinews, read this post from December: First wikipedias, now wikinews.