User:Rividian/Journalistic vs. Encyclopedic writing

Often, people say that "Wikipedia is not journalism". And it isn't. But I notice many seem to define journalism simply as "writing about recent events" - which misses much of the point. Journalistic writing is a method of writing that uses many techniques and styles which are totally different than those used in Encyclopedic writing, and it's important to understand the nuanced differences before saying what we should or shouldn't do with the (widely accepted) axiom that "Wikipedia is not Journalism".

Different methods

A journalist will usually start a story by looking at the primary sources which are the subject of the article. In writing a typical story, a reporter will read and summarize official material such as press releases, police reports, the text of proposed legislation, etc. These will be primary sources.

Then they will read and summarize background information, such as books and old newspaper articles, to add some context to the article they're writing. This is important because a press release, arrest report, etc. generally will just about the recent incident, and might not cover information that happened 5 years ago, or mention that the source of the official information might not want to be widely known. This stage of journalism would be considered to be using secondary (and sometimes even tertiary) sources.

Lastly, a reporter will often conduct some interviews to fill various needs the article may have. The reporter may ask neighbors their thoughts on a proposed new power plant, or may call the house, employer or attorney of a man just arrested for a crime. The goal is to provide more practical, opinion-oriented information to round out the more factual content generated by the earlier work.

The point of an encyclopedia article is not to put new information out there, but to summarize already-existing information in a more accessible and timeless format. Thus, in encyclopedia writing, one cannot use any information gleaned from unpublished interviews. More generally, "investigative reporting" techniques should be avoided. An encyclopedia writer should not be trying to combine primary and secondary sources to invent some new information/argument, but merely to summarize information and arguments that have already been made.

Different goals

A journalist is writing an article that will be published on a specific date, and only modified/corrected afterwards to fix non-trivial errors. Newspaper articles are intended to be timely, but not just because they are about recent events. Newspaper articles provide information that is designed to be useful on the publication date, but with little regard to the overall chronology. A story published at the height of a political scandal will, if anything, provide just cursory background on the scandal, but assumes the reader already knows at least the broad strokes. The story will instead focus only on recent developments that will be useful to readers who are following the scandal. If the nature of those developments changes at a future date, the original story is not modified, but a new story is written.

The result is that newspaper articles are extremely useful to cover current news, for people who want to read about current news. After publication, newspaper stories become less and less useful to readers. For example, in 2008, if one wanted to learn about the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, one would be just about as well-served reading newspaper articles, books or encyclopedia articles. The various forms of media are relatively recent, and equally accessible to readers in 2008. Books and encyclopedia may provide a more concise story already, but as the events are still ongoing, the way we look at what happened in 2003 may change dramatically as future events unfold. Thus, newspaper articles, which provide a great deal of information without picking and choosing what is going to be of historical importance, allow real advantages in learning about such an event by providing the reader with much greater context that may end up being useful.

However, if you go further back, for example, to the Watergate Scandal, period news aricles become much less useful. While some new information could be revealed theoretically in 2008, it will almost certainly not fundamentally change how we think about this event. Reading thousands of daily update-style newspaper stories about this event will present us with much information that is both redundant and which didn't end up being an important part of the overall story, and thus, everyone but historians will just want to read about the Watergate Scandal in books and encyclopedias written well after the dust settled, and the historical context was clear.

Different styles

Combining what I have discussed above, the result is that newspaper articles differ from encyclopedia articles in a much more fundamental way than the simple idea that newspaper articles are about recent events.

• News articles provide updates that focus on recent developments. Encyclopedia articles aim to cover all developments based on their importance, rather than how recently they occurred.
• News articles cover a topic in a periodic series of standalone articles. Encyclopedia articles cover a topic from beginning to end in one unified article, or, for the most expansive topics, a series of articles in a deliberate style that places the most important information in "top level articles". (see WP:SS)
• News articles can provide new information that has never been published before, and may even be encouraged by an editor to do so. Encyclopedia articles can not.

In practice

What all of this means is we should realize journalism is a lot more than just "writing about recent events". Journalistic writing is covering those events in a journalistic style - focusing on recent developments and providing historical background only as absolutely needed, writing new articles instead of revising old ones, and using methods, such as investigative reporting, that generate new information. When we say that "Wikipedia is not Journalism" it should mean that we are avoiding the tactics of journalistic writing, not that we merely aren't writing about recent events.