Wikipedia founder to launch new site to tackle fake news

The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales is going to launch Wikitribune, a news site aimed at tackling the spread of false information, a major issue faced by a majority of other sites such as Facebook.

The site would be jointly run by journalists and a community of volunteers who will verify the stories before publishing them. The same was confirmed by Wales through a video posted on the site.

Key Highlights

• The journalists will research and report the news stories while the volunteers will proofread, do a fact-check and add sources.

• The site will ensure that journalists only write articles based on facts that they can verify. The source of the news will also be mentioned.

• The site would be 100 per cent advertisement free.

• The site would also be accessible to all for free so anybody would be able to read the stories and flag or fix them if required and submit for review.

• The site would put the community at the top, as the community members would be working side by side with journalists, as equals.

• The site would also ensure that its financial funding is completely transparent, as it will publish its financials regularly. The money would be mostly used to pay the journalists.

As far as funding goes, the site would depend on crowdsourcing and the more funds it is able to raise, the more journalists it will employ. The crowdfunding section was launched on 25 April 2017.  The supporters would be required to pay $15 per month.

The advisory group of the site includes American journalist Jeff Jarvis, venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and British actress Lily Cole.

The site currently has about 5380 supporters and has been able to hire 3 journalists.