WikiTribune (stylized as WikiTRIBUNE) was a news wiki where volunteers wrote and curated articles about widely publicised news by proof-reading,
fact-checking
Fact-checking is the process of verifying factual information, in order to promote the veracity and correctness of reporting.
Fact-checking can be conducted before (''ante hoc'') or after (''post hoc'') the text is published or otherwise dissem ...
, suggesting possible changes, and adding sources from other, usually long established outlets. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
, announced the site in April 2017 as a for-profit site, not affiliated with Wikipedia or its support organisation, the
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...
. Until October 2018, WikiTribune employed journalists with established backgrounds in the profession who researched, syndicated, and reported news.
History
WikiTribune was founded by Jimmy Wales and Orit Kopel. Initial crowdfunding for the site was completed in May 2017, raising over £137,000, as well as around £400,000 from donors such as
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
,
Craig Newmark
Craig Alexander Newmark (born December 6, 1952) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as the founder of the classifieds website Craigslist. Prior to founding Craigslist, he worked as a computer programmer for companie ...
Peter Bale
Bale at the Freedom of Expression Awards in April 2019
Peter Bale (born 15 September 1962) is a New Zealand-born journalist and editor. In August 2017 he was named the launch editor of '' WikiTribune'', a position he held only briefly. Bale previ ...
was named as the first editor of the site on their temporary publishing platform at Medium.com. This was followed by a teaser article posted to Medium in September.
The site opened to the public in October 2017, with a focus on "political, business and economic news, bolstered by weekly in-depth articles". In April 2018, WikiTribune reported losses of over £110,000. Traffic to the website was low. A year later, WikiTribune laid off its team of reporters and editors, after which volunteers could publish articles without having them checked by professionals. "Despite the best efforts of staff, the overall structure and design didn't let the community genuinely flourish," said founder Jimmy Wales. "We didn't get very much work done."
In October 2019, WikiTribune Social, now called WT.Social, was launched. It was announced by Jimmy Wales as a social network. In November 2019, the WikiTribune website became a redirect to WT.Social.
Business model
WikiTribune was a for-profit site funded by donors, including donations by readers.
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
opened in April 2017 and concluded in May. Supporters were asked to pay £10 or $15 per month, but access to the news was free. It was stated that having no shareholders, advertisers or subscribers would reduce commercial pressures. Supporters who donated to the site were able to help decide which subjects the site would focus on.
Reporting journalists had to provide the
source
Source may refer to:
Research
* Historical document
* Historical source
* Source (intelligence) or sub source, typically a confidential provider of non open-source intelligence
* Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute o ...
of a fact or provide full transcripts and recordings of their interviews. The public was able to modify and update articles; however, such updates only went live after approval by staff or trusted volunteers.
"This will be the first time that professional journalists and
citizen journalists
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
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 rechecking all facts," said Wales. Wales intended for the project to help fight
fake news
Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue.Schlesinger, Robert (April 14, 2017)"Fake news in reality ...
online; he was reportedly motivated to address this problem after hearing the Counselor to the U.S. president,
Kellyanne Conway
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway (née Fitzpatrick; born January 20, 1967) is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previous ...
, use the expression '
alternative facts
"Alternative facts" was a phrase used by U.S. Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway, during a ''Meet the Press'' interview on January 22, 2017, in which she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statement about the a ...
' during an interview in January 2017.
Staff and structure
WikiTribute was based in an office space on the 22nd floor of
The Shard
The Shard, also referred to as the Shard of Glass, Shard London Bridge, and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 72-storey skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that forms part of The Shard Quarter dev ...
in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. The initial software platform for the site was a customised version of
WordPress
WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...
. Wales' company Jimmy Group, which he incorporated earlier in April 2017, filed a trademark request for "WIKITRIBUNE" with the Intellectual Property Office, which was examining the request in April 2017.
People named as involved in the project as advisors to Wales included Lily Cole,
Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis (born July 15, 1954) is an American journalist, associate professor, public speaker and former television critic. He advocates the Open Web and argues that there are many social and personal benefits to living a more public life on t ...
,
Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki (born August 30, 1954) is an American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He popularized ...
, and
Lawrence Lessig
Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...
. Funding for seven of the ten planned journalists was secured within three weeks of the launch and they were then recruited, starting with Holly Brockwell. The initial target of funding for ten journalists was then achieved in the crowd-funding appeal. An additional $100,000 of matching support from
Craig Newmark
Craig Alexander Newmark (born December 6, 1952) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as the founder of the classifieds website Craigslist. Prior to founding Craigslist, he worked as a computer programmer for companie ...
Medium
Medium may refer to:
Science and technology
Aviation
*Medium bomber, a class of war plane
*Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data
* Medium of ...
post published in May 2017, WikiTribune said it had met its funding goal, but would not start operations until later that year:
In a
Medium
Medium may refer to:
Science and technology
Aviation
*Medium bomber, a class of war plane
*Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data
* Medium of ...
post published in July 2017, WikiTribune introduced three of their initial ten journalists as Holly Brockwell, Harry Ridgewell, and Linh Nguyen.
On October 23, 2018, ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' reported that WikiTribune had laid off its team of reporters and editors, "a year after it launched with a promise to reinvent journalism." Volunteers could then publish articles without having them checked by professionals, although a new team of journalists purportedly was to be hired to work in support roles. "Despite the best efforts of staff, the overall structure and design didn't let the community genuinely flourish," said founder Jimmy Wales. "We didn't get very much work done." Funded by donations rather than advertisers, the site remained free to access.
Reception
Adrienne LaFrance
Adrienne LaFrance is an American journalist, executive editor of ''The Atlantic'' and former editor of ''TheAtlantic.com''.
Career
LaFrance received her B.A. in journalism from Michigan State University and an M.S. in journalism from Boston Uni ...
reviewed the WikiTribune proposal in ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
''. She had previously worked at the ''
Honolulu Civil Beat
Honolulu Civil Beat is a news website that practices journalism related to the U.S. state of Hawaii. Journalists and editors at Civil Beat have traveled to other U.S. held territories and military installations in the Pacific, reporting on curren ...
'', which was founded by Pierre Omidyar with similar ideas of "peer news". LaFrance thought the plan was over-ambitious as a staff of ten was insufficient to cover global news stories and managing volunteer input would be time-consuming.
American University
The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...
's school of communication, expected WikiTribune's hybrid approach to be more successful than the volunteer-only model of
Wikinews
Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be ...
: "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."Sarah Baxter, deputy editor of the ''
Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'', addressed WikiTribune in the newspaper in April 2017 in "Wikipedia won't break real news, just tweak it". After critical remarks on the
reliability of Wikipedia
The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online ...
, she said: "It's the warp and weft of debate in the free press, whether digital or print, that gets to the heart of the truth, not the wacky wisdom of self-appointed crowds."
Emily Bell
Emily Jane Bell (born 14 September 1965) is a British academic and journalist. She is Professor of Professional Practice at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (Columbia School of Journalism)
, director of the
Tow Center for Digital Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City.
Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism sc ...
, reviewed coverage of the project four days after the initial announcement. She said that there was considerable scepticism which was apparent in an Ask Me Anything session held by Wales. She thought that WikiTribune would duplicate work which was already being done and gave examples such as
David Fahrenthold
David A. Fahrenthold (born 1978) is an American journalist who writes for ''The New York Times.'' Previously he wrote for ''The Washington Post''. He has also served as a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. In 2017, he was awarded the Pulit ...
's
Pulitzer Pulitzer may refer to:
*Joseph Pulitzer, a 20th century media magnate
*Pulitzer Prize, an annual U.S. journalism, literary, and music award
*Pulitzer (surname)
* Pulitzer, Inc., a U.S. newspaper chain
*Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a non-pro ...
prize-winning coverage of the
United States presidential election
The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not dire ...
for the ''
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', during which he used
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
to engage with the public.
Zahera Harb, a lecturer in journalism at
City University of London
City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...
, questioned the site's reliance on unpaid volunteers, saying, "I see a model closer to 'exploitation' than anything else." She also wrote that the site would be susceptible to error and bias: "In this system, we will encounter mistakes similar to those we have been seeing in Wikipedia. Those mistakes tend to cause the same harm as fake news.... Meddling with Wikipedia accounts has become a tool in media wars between political and economic rivals and also between countries that are in conflict over territory or that have conflicting historical narratives."
Staff at a media law firm,
Hogan Lovells
Hogan Lovells is an American-British law firm co-headquartered in London and Washington, DC. The firm was formed in 2010 by the merger of the American law firm Hogan & Hartson and the British law firm Lovells. It employs about 2,400 lawyers a ...
Defamation Act 2013
The Defamation Act 2013 (c 26) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which reformed English defamation law on issues of the right to freedom of expression and the protection of reputation. It also comprised a response to perception ...
and concluded that the matter was not certain in law and so would depend upon the outcome of future court actions.
WikiTribune has been compared to CORRECT!V, a non-profit investigative journalism centre in Germany; ''
De Correspondent
''De Correspondent'' is a Dutch news website based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was launched on 30 September 2013 after raising more than in a crowdfunding campaign in eight days. The website distinguishes itself by rejecting the daily news ...
'', a Dutch news site financed by crowd-funding and charities; and ''
Krautreporter
''Krautreporter'' is a German news website that has been online since October 2014. The financing of the platform was done by crowdfunding. This is to guarantee independent journalism without advertising. It was inspired by the Dutch news websi ...
'', a German news website supported by crowd-funding.
According to ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', the site's first "taster" article, published in September 2017, "prompted such derision from supporters that some cancelled their monthly donations in protest"; readers reportedly complained that the article "was littered with factual errors and incomprehensible sentences" and seemed to have a pronounced
liberal bias
Media bias is the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of many events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of ...
.
See also
*
Wikinews
Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be ...
Open-source journalism
Open-source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com. Although the term was not actually used in the body text of Leonard's article ...
* {{Official website, https://web.archive.org/web/20191123162712/https://www.wikitribune.com/ (archive 23 November 2019)
Ask Me Anything – Q&A session with Jimmy Wales on
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...