Wikipedia founder aims to ‘fix the news’ with collaborative website

Wales argues that this has derailed news media’s role as truth-tellers. The site will be financed by a crowdfunding campaign that launches today, and will focus on a range of issues – from politics to science and technology. “It’s a movement that we believe will eventually obliterate low-rent, unreliable news for good”, said Wales in the Wikitribune blog. “We’re getting people to sign up as monthly supporters, and the more monthly supporters we have the more journalists we can hire”. However, his resolve didn’t last long as the President’s counselor Kellyanne Conway talked about alternative facts – something that wasn’t verified.

“But there was a moment: A friend had persuaded me that we should all give Donald Trump 100 days, we should just assume the best and hope he would do well, and be supportive of the presidency in general”. Like Wikipedia, the site will be free to access.

Wikitribune will follow a more traditional journalistic model in terms of the way it’s run, with professional journalists writing the stories, working under an editor.

Impossible says on its website that it builds “tools for grassroots communities, and support [s] projects that we think are solving fundamental world problems”.

Wikitribune will cover news, United Kingdom and U.S. politics and science and technology, producing “fact-checked, global news stories”. They will then shape the topics that Wikitribune will cover as well as offer up fact-checking duties-again, the work of a typical newsroom.

They will be backed up by a presumption of transparency in the site’s reporting, with journalists sharing full transcripts, video and audio of interviews.

Those contributors who support the site financially will eventually be able to advise on the topics they want Wikitribune to explore.

Also like Wikipedia, Wikitribune will be entirely crowdfunded.

This means that Wales is positive that the underlying idea behind Wikipedia will also work while weeding out misleading stories and create a holistic reading environment on the interwebs.

Wikitribune’s advisory group includes Mr Jarvis, venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and British actress Lily Cole, according to the website.

‘I find myself being a bit upset that people are making decisions based on lies, false information and so on, so I want to add a new trusted information source to all the other ones out there’.

Wikitribune will be funded by donations, putting it in direct competition with the Guardian, which frequently appeals to online readers for voluntary contributions in lieu of digital subscriptions.