Wiki Education recently collaborated with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Asian American Journalism Association (AAJA) to host a 6-week training course in order to give AAJA members and others the time and space to learn how to add Asian American and Pacific Islander journalists’ biographies to Wikipedia.
One course participant was Pamela Ng, homepage editor for Fox News Digital and part of the executive leadership program at AAJA. Previously, she worked for the New York Daily News and PIX11 News. She says she joined to improve her research skills and learn more about Wikipedia. She also wanted to improve the dearth of coverage on Wikipedia of Asian American journalists.
“I was shocked to learn that only 4 percent of English Wikipedia’s biographies of American journalists are of people of Asian descent. Representation is important and I hope my contributions will encourage others to help make Wikipedia content more diverse,” says Ng.
Ng appreciates the vast number of Asian American journalists she learned about while doing her own research to add content to Wikipedia. As part of the course, Ng created the biography of CeFaan Kim, an ABC News correspondent and reporter for WABC-TV in New York City. With her contributions on a website viewed by millions of people every day, she feels it is especially important that these biographies gain recognition. Ng is currently writing more biographies on Asian American journalists as well as expanding on existing pages in effort to increase Wikipedia’s Asian American representation.
Ng’s hands-on experience in the AAJA Wiki Scholars course increased her confidence in consulting Wikipedia for information, as she’s now familiar with the extensive work that goes into ensuring Wikipedia’s content is high quality and based on reliable sources. She hopes other detractors will soon join the hundreds of millions of people who use Wikipedia, and realize how impactful Wikipedia can be.
“Wikipedia is often viewed as an unreliable source because anybody can contribute to it. If more people learned about what goes into Wikipedia, I think there’d be less hesitancy in using it as a jumping off point for research or other projects,” says Ng.
To take or sponsor a course similar to the one Pamela took, please visit learn.wikiedu.org
