Journalism Students Assigned To Write On Wikipedia

Hugh Pickens writes "eCampus News reports that at the University of Denver, journalism students are assigned to write Wikipedia entries as part of a curriculum that stresses online writing and content creation, and students have so far composed 24 Wikipedia articles this year, covering topics from the gold standard to the San Juan Mountains to bimetallism, an antiquated monetary standard. Journalism instructors Lynn Schofield Clark and Christof Demont-Heinrich say students are told to check their sourcing carefully, just as they would for an assignment at a local newspaper. 'Students are leery about mentioning Wikipedia, because they might be subjected to criticism. But I tell them it's an online source of knowledge that just has some information that might be questionable, but that doesn't mean you have to dismiss all of [its content],' says Demont-Heinrich, who first assigned the Wikipedia writing to students in his introductory course taught during the university's recent winter semester. He said the Wikipedia entries didn't require old-school shoe leather reporting — because the online encyclopedia bars the use of original quotes — but they teach students how to thoroughly research a topic before publishing to a site that has over 350 million unique visitors and gets over 10 billion page views a month. 'I see journalism as being completely online within the next two to five years,' says Demont-Heinrich. 'If you're not trained to expect that and write for that, then you're not going to be ready for the work world.'"

Comments

I don't see the problem

[Ltap]

People are very negative about wikipedia, but generally it is accurate. It is also valuable simply to see where the writers of the articles got their information from, so it's a good starting point for researching a topic.

Re:I don't see the problem

[CannonballHead]

but generally it is accurat

For non-controversial subjects.

Re:I don't see the problem

[AkaXakA]

Adding well researched articles to Wikipedia makes it more accurate on the whole; that's a good thing!

Re:Heading it of at the pass

[khallow]

It probably also has to do with your article being notable. I could cite sources to a deer crossing Queensbury High Street (Bradford Telegraph and Argus) but I doubt that it would last long on wikipedia.

Depends on the sources. If major newspapers are obsessing over the details of this alleged deer crossing, then it may well be notable even if the event itself were otherwise unremarkable.