Laura Hazard Owen, Neiman Lab:

Good things can happen when a crowd goes to work on trying to figure out a problem in journalism. At the same time, completely crowdsourced news investigations can go bad without oversight — as when, for example, a group of Redditors falsely accused someone of being the Boston Marathon bomber. An entirely crowdsourced investigation with nobody to oversee it or pay for it will probably go nowhere. At the same time, trust in the media is at low and fact checking efforts have become entwined with partisan politics.

So what would happen if you combined professional journalism with fact checking by the people? On Monday evening, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched Wikitribune, an independent site (not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation) “that brings journalists and a community 
of volunteers together” in a combination that Wales hopes will combat fake news online — initially in English, then in other languages.

Here’s a link to Wikitribune. The site has been deluged with traffic, so don’t be surprised if you have trouble getting in. Early reviews have been nitpicky, focusing on typos and broken links. Me, I say give it time to find its feet. I love Wikipedia and have high hopes that Jimmy Wales can make this work.

From the Wikitribune front page:

Facts can be presented with bias, taken out of context and most recently a lot of facts are just plain…made-up. Supporting Wikitribune means ensuring that that journalists only write articles based on facts that they can verify. Oh, and that you can see their sources. That way you can make up your own mind.

Amen.