Good things can happen when a crowd goes to work on trying to figure out a problem in journalism. At the same time, completely crowdsourced news investigations can go bad without oversight — as when, for example, a group of Redditors falsely accused someone of being the Boston Marathon bomber. An entirely crowdsourced investigation with nobody to oversee it or pay for it will probably go nowhere. At the same time, trust in the media is low and fact-checking efforts have become entwined with partisan politics.

So what would happen if you combined professional journalism with fact checking by the people? On Monday evening, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched Wikitribune, an independent site (not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation) “that brings journalists and a community of volunteers together” in a combination that Wales hopes will combat fake news online — initially in English, then in other languages.

The site is launching with a crowdfunding campaign to fund the first Wikitribune journalists (the default amount is $10 a month, but users can donate any amount they wish) “with the first issue of Wikitribune following shortly.” The Wikitribune page said that the goal is to hire 10 journalists.

The idea is that the professional journalists will be paid to write “global news stories,” while volunteer contributors will “vet the facts, helps make sure the language is factual and neutral, and will to the maximum extent possible be transparent about the source of news posting full transcripts, video, and audio of interviews. In this way Wikitribune aims to combat the increasing proliferation of online fake news.”

Wales had hinted at his thinking behind the project in a February editorial in The Guardian. “If there is any kryptonite to false information, it’s transparency,” he wrote:

Technology platforms can choose to expose more information about the content people are seeing, and why they’re seeing it. We need this visibility because it sheds light on the process and origins of information and creates a structure for accountability. We need online spaces for open dialogue across a variety of viewpoints. These spaces must be inclusive by design — toxic behavior, including harassment, is unfortunately a fact of the internet. We need ground rules, commitment to verification, civil dialogue and active participation. And we need to apply these principles to all our online activity. The rise of the internet may have created our current predicament, but the people who populate the internet can help us get out of it.

Crowdsourced news investigations aren’t new, but they’ve mostly been done on a by-story basis. The Guardian did it with an investigation into Parliament’s expenses. Medium’s Ghost Boat was another attempt. And there is also Wikinews, the Wikimedia Foundation’s 13-year-old attempt at crowdsourced current news. That site has not achieved its stated mission of becoming an AP-like, “high quality feed of news free of charge“; on Monday, its top article was a short, three-day-old one about UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s call for a June general election.

But Andrew Lih, an associate professor at American University and the author of The Wikipedia Revolution, thinks that Wikitribune has a lot more potential, precisely because of its layer of professional journalists.

“A [true] wiki method is really only applicable or successful in a narrow domain. Wikipedia is successful in this very narrow space of crowdsourcing because it has such firm rules, and does not want or try to be original,” he said. On Wikipedia, deadlines don’t really matter, and it’s a lot easier for a group to write an article with a formulaic and consistent structure than one with a more narrative structure. “WikiNews, being all volunteer, just could not provide the focus and the number of eyeballs.”

An combined approach like Wikitribune’s can be more successful than WikiNews has been, he said, because it’s a hybrid of the paid and volunteer models. “You have an operational command structure that’s based on full-time staff. The pro journalists and editors provide the supervision on how the story moves forward. The crowd does the heavy lifting on a lot of the combing, sifting, searching, checking. You let the crowd do what the crowd is good at.”

“Wikitribune is news by the people and for the people,” Wales said in a statement. “This will be the first time that professional journalists and citizen journalists will work side by side as equals, writing stories as they happen, editing them live as they develop, and at all times backed by a community checking and re-checking facts.”</s>Jimmy Wales, founder of the user-edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia, pauses during an interview with Reuters at the Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem October 21, 2009.

Ronen Zvulun / Reuters</s>The founder of Wikipedia says he's on a mission to fight fake news.

Jimmy Wales is launching a news platform that will bring journalists together with an army of volunteer fact checkers. He's calling the site "Wikitribune."

"We want to make sure that you read fact-based articles that have a real impact in both local and global events," the publication's website states.

The site will publish news stories written by professional journalists. But in a page borrowed from Wikipedia, internet users will be able to propose factual corrections and additions. The changes will be reviewed by volunteer fact checkers.

Wikitribune says it will be transparent about its sources. It will post the full transcripts of interviews, as well as video and audio, "to the maximum extent possible."

The language used will be "factual and neutral."

"It takes professional, standards-based journalism, and incorporates the radical idea from the world of wiki that a community of volunteers can and will reliably protect the integrity of information," said Wales.

The project will be funded through contributions from supporters, rather than advertising or subscriptions.

Wales said that "Wikitribune" is designed to help counteract fake news spread on social media.

"[Fake news] is literally designed to show us what we want to see, to confirm our biases, and to keep us clicking at all cost," Wales said. "It fundamentally breaks the news."

Charlie Beckett, a professor at the London School of Economics, said that while any initiative that boosts trust and transparency in journalism is welcome, the danger is that it will appeal to the sort of people who are already "media literate."

"I wonder whether it will be able to scale up to make a significant impact on the information sphere -- especially on social networks such as Facebook where the main problems of fake news and misinformation occur," he added.

Wikipedia itself has been accused of hosting misleading or inaccurate information. At 10 edits per second, the internet encyclopedia has sometimes found it difficult to fight those who deliberately make false claims.

In recent years, the site has invested in new tech to identify what it calls "Wikipedia vandalism." It has also hired more administrators to police the site.

Wikipedia recently barring citations of The Daily Mail after branding the tabloid newspaper as "generally unreliable."</s>Sign up for one of our email newsletters.

WASHINGTON — Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has is launching a project aimed at reshaping the news media — and tackling the scourge of misinformation — using the same collaborative principles as the revolutionary online encyclopedia.

Wikitribune will rely on a broad online community of journalists and readers as fact checkers, a crowdsourcing model pioneered in the “wiki” system behind Wikipedia.

“The news is broken, but we've figured out how to fix it,” he said in a promotional video posted on the website's homepage, which does not yet carry any news stories. The page indicates the platform will go live in 29 days.

On Twitter, Wales called it “a news platform that brings journalists & volunteers together for fact-based articles with real impact.”

“Wikitribune takes professional, standards-based journalism and incorporates the radical idea from the world of Wiki that a community of volunteers can and will reliably protect and improve articles.”

The new service will be free, without advertising, relying on contributions from users in the same manner as the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation that operates Wikipedia.

It will ask supporters to subscribe for $15 per month and plans to hire at least 10 journalists to manage the site.

Wales told the BBC, “I think we're in a world right now where people are very concerned about making sure we have high quality fact-based information, so I think there will be demand for this.”

Fake news emerged as a serious issue during last year's US election campaign, when clearly fraudulent stories circulated virally on social media, potentially swaying some voters.

Charlie Beckett, media professor at the London School of Economics, welcomed Wikitribune as an attempt to tackle a lack of public trust in mainstream media, but questioned whether it would have the scale and reach to stem the flow of fake news.

“The kind of people who will pay attention to Wikitribune and contribute to it are people who are already pretty media-literate,” he told Reuters.

Joshua Benton, director of Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab, told the BBC that 10 or 20 people aren't going to “fix the news.”

“There's certainly a model for non-profit news that can be successful ... but I have a hard time seeing this scale up into becoming a massive news organization,” Benton said.</s>The founder of Wikipedia is starting a website he says will fight so-called fake news.

Jimmy Wales says his Wikitribune site will bring journalists and volunteer fact checkers together to stop the spread of false news stories.

"We want to make sure that you read fact-based articles that have a real impact in both local and global events," according to the group’s website.

The volunteer fact checkers’ role will be similar to how editors work on Wikipedia. Any changes will be reviewed by other fact checkers.

The site will also carry stories by professional journalists.

Unlike most news sites, Wikitribune says it will post full transcripts of interviews “to the maximum extent possible.”

"It takes professional, standards-based journalism, and incorporates the radical idea from the world of wiki that a community of volunteers can and will reliably protect the integrity of information," said Wales, according to CNN.

Money to fund the site will come from contributions as opposed to advertisements or subscriptions.

"[Fake news] is literally designed to show us what we want to see, to confirm our biases, and to keep us clicking at all cost," Wales said. "It fundamentally breaks the news."

Some experts as skeptical, saying the site may only appeal to journalists and people who read a lot of news.

"I wonder whether it will be able to scale up to make a significant impact on the information sphere, especially on social networks such as Facebook where the main problems of fake news and misinformation occur," saidCharlie Beckett, a professor at the London School of Economics, in an interview with CNN.

Wales’ Wikipedia has long battled criticism that it contains misleading or false information.</s>(Reuters) — Jimmy Wales, the founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has launched a website aimed at countering the spread of fake news by bringing together professional journalists and a community of volunteers and supporters to produce news articles.

The new platform, called Wikitribune, will be free to access and carry no advertising, instead relying on its readers to fund it, while the accuracy of news reports will be easily verifiable as source material will be published, Wales said.

“The news is broken, but we’ve figured out how to fix it,” he said in a promotional video posted on the website’s homepage.

The online proliferation of fake news, some of it generated for profit and some for political ends, became a major topic of angst and debate in many developed countries during last year’s U.S. presidential election.

Wales argued in his video that because people expected to get news for free on the Internet, news sites were reliant on advertising money, which created strong incentives to generate so-called “clickbait”, catchy headlines to attract viewers.

“This is a problem because ads are cheap, competition for clicks is fierce and low-quality news sources are everywhere,” said Wales.

He also argued that social media networks, where an ever-increasing number of people get their news, were designed to show users what they wanted to see, confirm their biases and keep them clicking at all costs.

Social media giant Facebook was widely criticized last year for not doing enough to prevent fake news reports from spreading on its platform, and has announced new tools to tackle the problem.

Wales said Wikitribune would combine professional, standards-based journalism with what he called “the radical idea from the world of wiki that a community of volunteers can and will reliably protect the integrity of information”.

He said articles would be authored, fact-checked and verified by journalists and volunteers working together, while anyone would be able to flag up issues and submit fixes for review.

“As the facts are updated, the news becomes a living, evolving artifact, which is what the Internet was made for,” he said.

The Wikitribune homepage said the platform would go live in 29 days. It also indicated that the intention was to hire 10 journalists, but none had been hired so far.</s>Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is launching a crowd-funded news service to help combat fake news.

The internet entrepreneur has created Wikitribune, a news initiative which says it will see professional journalists and community contributors produce "fact-checked, global news stories".

The new site will be free to use, but also accept donations from monthly "supporters" who will then be able to suggest topics to be covered - while the site also says it will publish full transcripts of interviews where possible as part of transparency plans.

"Wikitribune is news by the people and for the people," Mr Wales said.

"This will be the first time that professional journalists and citizen journalists will work side-by-side as equals writing stories as they happen, editing them live as they develop and at all times backed by a community checking and re-checking all facts."</s>LONDON — The founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia has announced plans for a crowd-funded news website offering stories by journalists and volunteers working together, an initiative he hopes will counter the spread of fake news.

Jimmy Wales said the new platform, Wikitribune, would be free to read and carry no advertising, instead relying on supporters to fund it, while the accuracy of its articles would be easily verifiable as source material would be published.

“The news is broken, but we’ve figured out how to fix it,” he said in a promotional video posted on the website’s homepage, which does not yet carry any news stories. The page indicates the platform will go live in 29 days.

The initial goal is to raise sufficient funds to hire 10 professional journalists. The website is set up to encourage supporters to give $10 a month, but the amount and frequency of gifts can easily be modified.

The online proliferation of fake news, some of it generated for profit and some for political ends, became a major topic of angst and debate in many developed countries during last year’s U.S. presidential election.

Charlie Beckett, media professor at the London School of Economics, welcomed Wikitribune as an attempt to tackle a lack of public trust in mainstream media, but questioned whether it would have the scale and reach to stem the flow of fake news.

“The kind of people who will pay attention to Wikitribune and contribute to it are people who are already pretty media-literate,” he told Reuters.

Wales argued in his video that because Internet users expected news to be free, news sites were reliant on advertising money, which incentivised them to produce “clickbait” rather than quality output.

He also said social media networks, where an ever-increasing number of people get their news, were designed to show users what they wanted to see, confirming their biases.

The Wikitribune website said articles would be authored, fact-checked and verified by journalists and volunteers working together, while users would be able to flag up issues and submit fixes for review.

Beckett said journalists could benefit from tapping into expertise or information held by readers, but said this was already being done by many mainstream media. He also said it was not a miracle remedy against inaccuracy.

“There’s nothing magical about being a citizen. As a citizen you have your own bias and prejudice and experience as well,” he said.</s>Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia, is launching a new online publication which will aim to fight fake news by pairing professional journalists with an army of volunteer community contributors. The news site is called Wikitribune . From a report:</s>Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is to launch Wikitribune, a news site aiming to tackle the idea that "the news is broken and we can fix it," in the face of problems that Facebook and others have had in curbing the spread of false information.

The site will be run by journalists as well as a community of volunteers who will verify stories, Wales said in a video posted on the Wikitribune site today.

"Because ads are cheap, competition for clicks is fierce and low quality news sources are everywhere," he explained in the video.

"Social media, where most people get their news these days, is literally designed to show us what we want to see, to confirm our biases and to keep us clicking at all costs. It fundamentally breaks the news. The truth is, on the internet, no one is guarding the gate. So it's time to rethink the gatekeeper."
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announces plans for a crowdfunded news website, Wikitribune, that will publish stories by journalists, with contributions, including fact checking, by volunteers to, among other goals, counter the recent spread of so-called "fake news".