"the main cause of Wikinews's lack of success was that the wiki community was unable to gain first-hand knowledge of events or communicate with relevant people"
I don't think it's that. Ever since google news went to shit I rely on wikipedia to read the news and I was surprised that wikinews was actually a thing and it was discontinued for .. this? My first guess was that it's because they don't have control over it as much as the "official" news outlets. So they just shut it down. It's important because the news is actually where things happen for the majority of people, this is why propaganda works afterall.