WASHINGTON: Wi­­kipedia founder Jimmy Wales is launching a project aimed at reshaping the news media — and tackling the scourge of misinformation — using the same collaborative principles as the revolutionary online encyclopedia.

Wikitribune will rely on a broad online community of journalists and readers as fact checkers, a crowdsourcing model pioneered in the “wiki” system behind Wikipedia.

“The news is broken and we can fix it,” reads the website of the project unveiled by Wales on Monday, describing itself as focused on “evidence-based journalism.”

On Twitter, Wales called it “a news platform that brings journalists & volunteers together for fact-based articles with real impact.” “Wikitribune takes professional, standards-based jou­r­nalism and incorporates the radical idea from the world of Wiki that a community of volunteers can and will reliably protect and improve articles.”

The new service will be free, without advertising, relying on contributions from users in the same manner as the nonprofit Wik­imedia Foundation that operates Wikipedia.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2017