This document discusses the launch of WikiTribune, a new kind of news service where community members are treated equally to staff in contributing to news stories. The service aims to build trust through community discipline, transparency, and continual improvement. It outlines WikiTribune's approach of using staff journalism to catalyze community input on story selection and the editorial process. Key aspects discussed include the criteria for selecting stories, emerging community engagement, and opening the news production process to scrutiny in an effort to improve quality through community expertise and feedback.

1. Wiki Journalism – a pilot for big ideas
Peter Bale, Launch Editor,
peter.bale@wikitribune.com

3. “The internet will destroy more businesses
than it creates” - Rupert Murdoch, 1999
- citation wanted please
Climate

4. “This is the launch of a project to
build a news service.
“An entirely new kind of news
service in which the trusted users of
the site – the community members –
are treated as equal to the staff of
the site.”
- Jimmy Wales
Climate change

5. Trust will be built into the DNA of
WikiTribune:
- the discipline the community imposes
- adherence to the same principles which
underly the Trust Project
- Accountability
- Transparency
- Perpetual improvement
Trust

6. ‘Wiki Journalism’
A contradiction in terms?
- Journalism is the world observed and described from a vantage point
- Journalism as written has a beginning, a middle and an end
- Journalism is inherently imperfect and of the moment it is created
More detailed definitions at: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org

7. "So, let us today drudge on about our inescapably
impossible task of providing every week a first rough
draft of history that will never really be completed about
a world we can never really understand…”
- Phil Graham, publisher, The Washington Post, 1963
Wikipedia

8. Journalism at WikiTribune - a system
How does the staff team decide what is (and is not) a WikiTribune story?
We have a defined set of criteria and a checklist*:
- complex, not binary good or bad and with multiple points of view
- international relevance: worldwide significance or known public interest
- likely to last more than one news cycle
- can we do it and can we add value

9. Rethinking a process
“The volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to
deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably…under conditions of complexity, not
only are checklists a help, they are required for success.”
- Atul Gawande “The Checklist Manifesto: how to get things right”

10. What will we cover?

11. How will we cover an event?

12. Metrics
- Content Insights
- Google Analytics
- Others
KPIs
- Engagement - time, bounce, depth, recirculation
- Retention - return rate, frequency, subscription
- New users - social, newsletter, distribution
Post-match analysis

14. Journalism at WikiTribune
Accuracy, a neutral point of view, clarity, simplicity, attribution, sourcing, extra
information, invitation to participate, shareable, curation, fairness.
Answer the five “Ws” - who, what, when, where, why
Context - why does this matter to me, why should I care
Not all reports will have all those attributes -- apart from accuracy -- but the
WikiTribune process will ensure everyone considers this question: Why not?
WikiTribune editorial core documents

15. Journalism at WikiTribune
We are unlikely to cover: disasters, weather, celebrities - unless they illustrate some
wider issue or can be dealt with in our Briefing
The WikiTribune Community already test these criteria and informs news editing
Staff journalism is a catalyst for the Community input not a substitute for it.
The Community will decide what level of participation on the process they want: fact-
checking, annotating, adding expertise, re-writing, editing, replacing and more…
It is emerging and changing every day - mostly TALK now but increasingly reporting

16. Journalism at WikiTribune – three weeks in
• Team of 12-ish – across time zones but concentrated in London
• Around 3,500 registered users active in the Community
• Briefing runs through the day and forms basis of a newsletter
• Emerging, Developing, Analysis, Essay formats done against checklist and style
• “Slow journalism” approach to longer projects
• Evolving Community engagement, readiness to take part, choices
to edit, contribute, TALK, offer expertise
• Drilling towards goal of frequency and relevance

17. Staff journalism is a catalyst for the Community not a substitute for it.
If, as we believe, the Community is the secret sauce…how do we provide the best
platform for the best quality discourse?
• Fears: surrender of control: by the staff journalists
• Risks: platform being vandalised
• Trust is at the the centre of the proposition: trust in content, trust in
intent and ultimately trust in the identity of those contributing
• We can learn from Wikipedia: “an idea that doesn’t work in theory but does
work in practice” [alleged quote from Jimmy Wales he doesn’t recall]
• Behaviour: ”assume good faith”

18. Community gives us:
- reach
- expertise
- passion
- self-criticism

19. We’re inviting the Community into the journalism process at every stage –
the selection, collection, the preparation, the reporting, the writing, the editing and pre
and post-publication editing and comment
“Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know
how they are made” - attributed to John Godfrey Saxe, 1869
We’re opening the sausage machines of journalism and of a Wiki to huge
and real-time scrutiny. Yes, it’s scary.

20. Thanks...WikiTribune too is for everyone
Peter Bale, Launch Editor,
peter.bale@wikitribune.com
© Reuters