Newsless.org

This, via Journalism Hope, is a pretty hefty endorsement:

[Google senior adviser Richard] Gingras urges editors to take a lesson from Wikipedia’s redefinition of the encyclopedia.Although it has no original reporting, Wikipedia is becoming a popular source for news. To illustrate this, Gingras shows a recent Google search on the anthrax attacks. The first result: a Wikipedia article. The second: The site of a man who has been researching and following the case for several years. People are going to these sites, and referring others to them, in large enough numbers to drive them to the top of page rankings, he says.

The Wikipedia article is nearly 5,000 words and also has multiple sources linked. On big news stories, Gingras argues, Wikipedia’s contributors usually go a good job of pulling together a lot of reliable material — often from newspaper sites — and updating it continually.

See, even Google thinks Wikipedia offers news editors a model to examine. Although I’d quibble with this:

He offers a premise: the atomic unit of news content has changed. That’s what happened with music. Until a few years ago, the atomic unit of music was albums. But with the development of mp3, it became the song. “It’s not about your site, it’s about the article,” Gingras says.

I’d argue that the article (and the mp3) is a molecular unit. Right now, I’d say the fact (and, extending the analogy, the sample) is the atomic unit of news. More on that in a few minutes …

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