Wikitribune Is Wikipedia founder Jim Wales's Plan To Fight Fake News

Wikipedia has always been a site to take with a grain of salt because it’s curated by the Wiki community, which isn't necessarily composed of professionals or specialists. Now Wikipedia co-founder Jim Wales wants to launch a news service to fight fake news, incorporating that same community idea with professional journalists.

Wikitribune’s crowdfunding campaign launched Tuesday in hope of raising enough money to get an ad-free, paywall-free news service that can fight fake news up and running. In a video about the new service, Wales described a platform created by professionals who write, fact check and verify news but where the community of readers can also take part and submit suggestions and changes that will be reviewed.

“The news is broken but we figured out how to fix it,” Wales said in the opening shot.

Read: Google Fact Check Helps Identify Fake News, Now Available In Search

Through this process, the news "becomes a living, evolving artifact, which is what the internet was made for,” Wales said in the video. The platform relies on donors rather than advertisers, which Wales said will keep the news from being based on what will get clicks or page views.

So far the campaign has more than 2,000 supporters, and has raised enough money to hire one journalist, with the goal set at 10 journalists. There are 29 days left in the fundraising campaign, the site said, and Wales is hoping people will sign up for monthly “subscriptions” in the future to continue supporting the news. They're called subscriptions, but they won't be required to access any of the information on the site.

The articles will also have either transcripts and recordings or links to the facts or evidence supporting each piece, “That way you can make up your own mind,” the site said.

Wales will be advised by marketing professional Guy Kawasaki, journalist and Professor Jeff Jarvis and Lily Cole, actress, director and entrepreneur.