Wikinews:Newsworthy and neutral

Newsworthiness and neutrality are two of the cornerstones of Wikinews; part of this project's parallel to Wikipedia's five pillars. (See WN:PILLARS.)

The basic outline of what makes an article newsworthy is laid out in a section of the content guide.

Neutrality is a critical aspect of all Wikimedia projects. Wikinews and Wikipedia share similar &mdash; though not identical &mdash; neutral point of view policies that are not negotiable.

Newsworthiness - An opinion with some guidelines
As stated in the introduction, there are general guidelines that an article can be tested against to establish newsworthiness. This list is by no means exhaustive, and edge-cases are a matter of opinion based on experience.

When is a press release news?
One example most people will recognise is the press release. There are regularly employees of small companies release their news on a free wire service then cut and paste it into Wikinews. It is only "news" to the company's few dozen employees and some customers.

When you get up to companies like Google or Microsoft then there is a good chance that the content of a press release is news to a wide audience. This is still no reason to cut and paste the press release; other sources should be used or quotes and opinion sought from appropriate parties.

Neutrality - Can you tell what your learned biases are?
Everyone has particular biases. Every news source has bias, or, perhaps more accurately you could say every news source has someone who will accuse it of bias. Sometimes an indication of the quality of a news source is how many critics it has on both sides of the isle.