The news is broken but we've figured out how to fix it, says Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.
Wales talks about the good old days of reportage where editors, fact-checkers and writers were the gatekeepers of trusted news before the internet came along and destroyed it with it advertisement-driven free content, click wars, and plenty of dodgy “news” sites and alternative facts.
WikiTribune is an initiative by the Wiki Foundation that positions itself as the new wave of gatekeeping: a mix of professional, standards-based journalism and the Wiki model whereby a community of volunteers act as an army of fact-checkers and verifiers.
The ad-supported model is also being dumped because WikiTribune wants readers to pay for their news – but there is no paywall, just a voluntary monthly contribution, and anyone can flag inaccuracies in stories, which are constantly being updated to incorporate new information and corrections.
