{"id":313648,"date":"2017-04-25T05:29:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=313648"},"modified":"2017-04-25T05:29:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:29:25","slug":"wikipedias-jimmy-wales-creates-news-service-wikitribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/04\/wikipedias-jimmy-wales-creates-news-service-wikitribune\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales creates news service Wikitribune"},"content":{"rendered":"
Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales is planning a news service that combines the work of professional journalists and volunteers.<\/p>\n
His goal is for Wikitribune to offer “factual and neutral” articles that help combat the problem of “fake news”.<\/p>\n
The service is intended to be both ad-free and free-to-read, so will rely on supporters making regular donations.<\/p>\n
One expert said it had the potential to become a trusted site, but suggested its influence might be limited.<\/p>\n
Wikitribune shares many of the features already found in Mr Wales’s online encyclopaedia, including the need for writers to detail the source of each fact and a reliance on the public to edit articles to keep them accurate.<\/p>\n
However, while anybody can make changes to a page, they will only go live if a staff member or trusted community volunteer approves them.<\/p>\n
The other big difference is that the core team of writers will be paid, although there may also be instances in which a volunteer writes the initial draft and then a staff member edits it.<\/p>\n
Regular donations<\/strong><\/p>\n A demo version of the site, seen by the BBC, declared “the news is broken and we can fix it”.<\/p>\n Mr Wales explained that he believed the advertising-based model used by most of the media had led it to “chase clicks”, which affected standards.<\/p>\n “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,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n “We’re getting people to sign up as monthly supporters and the more monthly supporters we have the more journalists we can hire.<\/p>\n “In terms of minimums, if we could only hire two journalists then it would be a blog and not really worth doing.<\/p>\n “But I would love to start with a lot more – 10 to 20.”<\/p>\n