Wikipedia:News articles

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Articles about items in the news are only considered encyclopedic if they are verifiably of significant lasting and historical interest and impact.

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia which means that there is no practical limit to the number of topics we can cover or the total amount of content. However, it is also not an indiscriminate collection of information and it is not newspaper.

Many things are in the news and are reported by numerous reliable and verifiable sources that are independent of the subject, yet are not of historic or encyclopedic importance. News organizations have different criteria for their content than the criteria used by encyclopedias. A violent crime, sensationalized event or accidental death may be notable enough to reporters and news editors to justify coverage in the news, but not be of encyclopedic importance. But a crime that led to a significant change in the law, an event that actually became a sensation, or a death that led to new safety practices, may have long-term encyclopedic value, and could merit an article if sufficient secondary sources were available to establish its importance.

The guidelines for verifiability, notability and reliable sources, followed to the letter, would mean that any news event which was independently reported by multiple news reporting services on any given day could have a Wikipedia article, even if it were the most trivial coverage or sensationalistic story. Notability has no time value, so any story from any time in the past would be equally qualified. The standard guidelines, strictly interpreted and applied to their logical conclusion, lead to an absurd result.