Apr 25, 2017
Why WikiTribune is doomed to fail
Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has decided to expand his encyclopaedic empire into the world of journalism with WikiTribune — an ad-free and free-to-read news website.
WikiTribune will work in much the same way as Wikipedia. The site will rely on the donations of readers and allow them to edit news stories alongside professional journalists, while requiring every fact to be sourced as though it were on Wikipedia.
Wales told the BBC he was setting up the venture in an effort to fight “fake news” and provide readers with “factual and neutral” journalism. Wales even went so far as to claim that WikiTribune would “fix the news”.
But his venture will do nothing of the sort. In fact, the model of WikiTribune will make it a far poorer source of news than most established media outlets. Here are five reasons why WikiTribune is doomed to fail:
1. A newsroom of “10 to 20 people” is not big enough
When your stated aim is to “fix the news”, you simply cannot hope to do that with a few handfuls of people.
On the newsdesk of the Sunday Times, there are around 15 journalists covering British current affairs alone. There are a whole string of bureaus, freelancers and fixers covering international affairs for the Economist.
Wales is naïve to believe that a team of 10 to 20 professional journalists would have the necessary resources, expertise and connections to produce full and factual coverage of the latest news from South America to China.
2. Journalists cannot always detail the source of every fact
Readers are often frustrated when journalists — particularly political journalists — quote unnamed sources in their articles. So you can understand why requiring journalists to detail their sources could be a popular idea.
But consider for a moment the stories that would not have been possible were journalists required to reveal their sources. The Washington Post’s investigation into the Watergate scandal may have fallen flat were it not for Deep Throat — the unnamed insider who fed reliable information to Woodward and Bernstein. Similarly, several stories of widespread sexual abuse would have been handicapped if victims were expected to put their names to their claims.
Although a WikiTribune journalist could theoretically spend a career writing decent pieces with detailed sources, outstanding journalism often relies on sources being protected by the shield of anonymity.
3. Your readers should not be your editors
Look below the line of any political news article and you will see why allowing readers to edit content is not the best idea if your goal is to fight fake news.
By letting its audience edit and write news articles, WikiTribune will open its coverage up to distortion, not only from partisan readers slighted by negative stories about their political heroes, but also politicians with axes to grind and opponents to damage.
Even with the editorial barrier proposed by Wales — a team of staff editors and “community volunteers” — WikiTribune is also putting itself at greater risk of a threat worse than overt bias: a spate of lawsuits. Good luck surviving that on a donation model.
4. Donators will have too much influence over the agenda
Under Wales’ current proposals, readers who donate monthly to WikiTribune will have a say over what the news site covers by listing their interests when they sign up. This is a strange move for a man so committed to journalism being neutral.
Bias is as much about what is covered, as it is about how a story is covered. WikiTribune will soon find that the audience selecting the site’s news agenda are serving their own agenda.
5. Plenty of news outlets already publish factual articles and neutral news is not popular.
It may not be a crowd-pleasing point to make in an era of hysteria surrounding “fake news”, but established media outlets almost always tell the truth. Of course a lot of news stories come with an editorial slant, but readership figures would suggest that this is a popular approach to journalism (the Mail Online attracted 15 million daily readers last month).
It is hard to see how WikiTribune can succeed in a market where factual articles are plenty and neutral news is less popular.
If Wales is to meet his admirable target of establishing a non-profit news site that networks with its readers, he will need to change his blueprint first.
