Inside the sausage factory: Minimum viable journalism at WikiTribune
“There is immense risk in creating a platform like this to become the thing that you’re trying to fix.”
Since his appointment as the launch editor of WikiTribune in August, Peter Bale, formerly of The Center for Public Integrity, CNN, MSN and Reuters, has been working on the “minimum viable journalism” the site could produce, he explained in a talk at Hacks/Hackers London on 27 September.
WikiTribune, an initiative by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, aims to create journalism in an environment where journalists and community members are on equal footing, working together on sourcing, attributing, fact-checking, rewriting and more.
“We all know how sterile comments have become and Jimmy talks a lot about the good intentions of people,“ said Bale.
WikiTribune is looking for the wisdom in the crowds, not the wisdom of the crowds, he added, quoting Storyful founder Mark Little.
Accuracy, clarity, simplicity and attribution are central to the platform’s ethos, but creating journalism with a workflow so different from that of a traditional newsroom can be a daunting proposition.
In order to determine which stories WikiTribune will cover, reporters go through a checklist of five main criteria, designed to ensure primarily that their approach to journalism can add value to each story.
“So much of us think that journalism is about poetry and creativity and beauty… and a tremendous amount of it is about process,” Bale told attendees.
The criteria represent points that experienced newswire reporters for example would automatically assess in their heads while covering a story on the ground.
But WikiTribune’s system, written as a “living document” constantly up for assessment, is meant to be shared with the community.
“All of these lists are not necessarily replacements for judgement but they will allow a relatively inexperienced person to say ‘why aren’t we hitting these points’.”
As well as focusing on the minimum viable journalism, WikiTribune is taking a “slow journalism” approach, choosing to cover only stories that are expected to last more than a single news cycle. The team plans to “take a little bit of time to do things properly, away from the pace of the day”.
Bale currently has a team of about 10 journalists and 200 community members who are signed up to the beta version of the site — one of the contributors is a former French diplomat, who wrote an essay about Brexit.
And while very few community members have produced any “recognisable journalism” so far, they have provided valuable feedback.
“It’s incredibly difficult to think of staff journalists being equal to the community, and this whole idea of them being a catalyst for the community not a substitute is really important.”
Bale singled out trust and identity as key issues to explore, as well as taking in as much knowledge as possible from Wikipedia, which works in practice, but not in theory.
But is inviting people into the journalism process to see how the sausage is made enough to spark their interest?
“My biggest worry about this project is that maybe it’s a bit dull. Maybe people get inside that sausage factory, open it up and realise that they can edit, change, create stories, and they think jesus that’s not much fun.
“So we’re gonna have to really create some stimulation and interest and fantastic tutorials.”
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