Wikipedia isn't looking to compete with the media on news, no matter how the Associated Press frames it, Jimmy Wales tells Poynter Online.

The interview asks Wales to respond to the content of an internal AP strategy document leaked this summer, which describes how everyone's favorite collaborative encyclopedia captured a significant amount of traffic following the death of Michael Jackson, and it suggests the AP should create a series of landing pages to steal back page views from Wikipedia.

Poynter asked Wales whether he sees Wikipedia as competing with the AP.

Wales: "Only in the highly attenuated sense that everything on the Internet competes with everything else. We very consciously avoid doing original reporting, and we are very strong in our insistence on linking to original sources."

Poynter: The AP memo says, "The Wikipedia model of standing, authoritative pages could be challenged." What's your reaction to that?

Wales: Sounds like something they should have done years ago. This is the most insightful portion of the document.

More, after the jump, including the background on why the AP sees Wikipedia as a competitor.

Wales continues: Nothing in this document couldn't have been written by someone actually savvy in the Internet culture five years ago. The AP is, again, five years late.

Poynter: If AP did [create landing pages], would you view it as a competitor to Wikipedia?

Wales: No, I would not. We are an encyclopedia. We are a charity. We exist in order to provide a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet. We don't care if we are first in the Google search results, or second. That's not how we look at the world.

The strategy document talks about how audience behavior online following Jackson's death marked "a new milestone was reached in Internet news consumption."

... within 30 minutes, the news absorbed 25 percent of all Web traffic....

Two of the biggest beneficiaries of that traffic bonanza were Twitter and Wikipedia, a couple of digital natives that would have been viewed as unlikely news competitors even a few months ago. Indeed, a new pattern of consumption was validated in the confusing minutes that followed the first reports of Jacko's death: Users shared; they searched and they clicked on Wikipedia.

For those with long Internet memories, the new routine of Twitter-to-Google-to-Wikipedia contrasts sharply with the behavior of users in August of 1997, when millions loaded and reloaded bookmarked news sites to get updates on the death of Princess Diana....

The traffic pattern also represents an important variation in the established drill since Sept. 11, 2001, when users began using Google and other search engines as a shortcut to news snippets.

Now the news may be shared before it is even searched. And... in cases where famous people, places and things are involved, you will undoubtedly find Wikipedia in the mix....

If the rise of Google taught people to search rather than surf for news, the phenomenon now seems to lead more often than not to a comprehensive, perpetually expanding resource called Wikipedia.

...

Wikipedia's model of standing, authoritative pages could be challenged.

Photo credit: Andrew Lih (Wikimedia Commons)