Wikimedia Foundation is shutting down news project Wikinews

The 31 language versions of the Wikipedia sister project "Wikinews" will be closed after more than two decades. Following a resolution by the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, the project is to be switched to read-only mode on May 4th, as it has not met the foundation's expectations. The content is also redundant compared to the information in Wikipedia articles, which is often updated in real-time.

The move follows a lengthy period of internal discussions: A foundation task force had already recommended closing all Wikinews editions in 2025. Among other things, it cited low reader usage, significant gaps in thematic coverage, and doubts about long-term relevance. The recommendation sparked a debate within the community about whether the Wikinews project could potentially be continued with structural changes.

Platform for Grassroots Journalism

Wikimedia launched Wikinews in 2004 to create an open platform for so-called grassroots journalism under Creative Commons licenses. Despite initial attention, Wikinews could not match the usage numbers of other Wikimedia projects. As early as 2018, the then Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher expressed doubts in an interview with heise online about the idea of investing more resources in the platform. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales had already dedicated himself to other journalistic projects at the time.

Most recently, the number of active authors across all Wikinews language versions was just over 700. The German version of Wikinews currently contains over 14,000 articles and was one of the most active editions internationally. The still available articles, with a total size of almost 120 MByte, can also be downloaded bundled.

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