Tail-chasing in news: after running across a story in the Boston Globe about the inevitable newWikinews (actually, after enduring a splash ad & then running into the story), I wondered how a venture like this (so amateur, so unauthoritative, so doe-eyed Internet) would actually work.

So I picked a story that might well attract obliteration of just-the-facts-ma’m: Wikinews coverage of the Supreme Court uanimous slapdown of file sharing - with the intention of comparing it to ‘real’ news coverage.

Surprisingly, the New York Times had nothing about this story on its home page - the NYT was consumed, instead, with the covering the Court’s refusal to consider saving Judith Miller from going to jail for protecting her sources.

So I next turned to CNET’s coverage of the file-swapping ruling . It was a more extensive than the Wikinews treatment - but, as of right now, the tone seems similar; both writeups of the story are balanced and neutral in tone. Of course, the Wikinews entry could and will change.

Fluidity make a return visit to the same story on Wikinews interesting - this kind of news is its own development. And, at least in this case, it swamps the ’story’, newssharing over filesharing.