Hi Jimmy,
The articles I've read on the new venture have been like appetizers, providing just enough information to generate a new list of questions. :-) So, in no particular order, here are some things that came to mind:
Will the focus be investigative journalism, or "deep dives" in the manner of newsdeeply.com, or breaking news, or something else?
AIUI, fact-checking will be done by community volunteers in the collaborative manner of Wikipedia; will they flag information that they consider to be problematic, annotate draft news articles with comments and questions, revise drafts themselves,...?
The website shows an initial goal of ten journalists to be hired; does this include copy editors as well? And more generally, how will copy editing be handled?
With what frequency do you envision news to be published, e.g. a weekly magazine, a daily feed of several short pieces and one feature article, ...?
Who will have access to journalists' notes and other raw materials? How will sources be protected while permitting maximum participation of community volunteers in the vetting/fact-checking process? Will there be provision for leakers, i.e. some sort of SecureDrop thing? If so, how will that be handled?
Will guides be produced around vetting of information, like e.g. the guide at verificationhandbook.com? More generally, how will community members learn vetting and verification skills for journalism?
How will good-faith disputes around fact-checking be resolved and by whom? How will trolls be handled?
Will Wikitribune journalists collaborate with other groups doing like-minded work, for example bellingcat.com?
I gather that there are developers working on this project too, at least on wordpress hacking; are they also part of the crowdfunding? More generally, is budget/staffing information available or will it be soon?
What roles will the four named advisors play in this project, with their specific skillsets?
In an ever shrinking paid market for journalism, where funding is harder and harder to come by and many publications have closed their doors or turned digital-only, what are your thoughts about competing in that market, both as a job provider and potentially taking subscribers from other media?
Please feel free to ramble on at length about these topics as much as you like; I'm interested in the broader picture and not just the specific details :-)
Thanks a lot!
Ariel
On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 12:59 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
Today I announced a new initiative, outside of my Wikimedia activities, to combat fake news. It is important to me that I share directly with all of you information about this new initiative early on.
The new project will use a wiki-style setup and experiment with bringing together professional journalists and community contributors to produce fact-checked, global news stories. At launch, we'll be using a hacked version of wordpress and we'll be evaluating whether that's the right tool moving forward. Wordpress has a lot to commend it (free software, mature platform, used by lots of newsrooms, active developer ecosystem) but also has some philosophy that's quite "top down" in a way. (Not many people would think in a wiki way when setting up a newsroom!)
This new initiative, Wikitribune, will be a learning experience - my vision is one that I've had a hard time explaining... except to Wikimedians who tend to immediately get it.
While I am launching this project independent from Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, it is my plan that this new project will work alongside Wikimedia in the free knowledge movement. For example, I hope that the numerous Wikinews/Wikinoticias/Wikinotizie/etc. communities can collaborate with the Wikitribune community in way that allows both to learn and benefit from each other. Additionally, Wikitribune will utilize the same Creative Commons license (CC-BY) as other free content projects in the news space - so they can take the stories written by our professional journalists and communities and make use of them.
You can find out more information about Wikitribune at: https://www.wikitribune.com
Thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer questions! (But I'm quite swamped with everything at the moment so please forgive me if I answer in bursts!)
--Jimbo
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