Hello, world: this is WikiTribune
As somebody who ran a (now defunct) journalism startup and is still heavily involved in crowd-sourced muck-raking: I think this is exactly the wrong approach to massively collaborative journalism.<p>The thing we need _less_ of is "news". The thing we need more of is investigation. Even before the digital age, "news" was a way to sell paper with a mark-up. Now it's a way to sell eyeballs to advertisers. The fact that the fourth estate emerged was just a lucky byproduct of the "news" industry, even though it is the foundation of the modern respect for the role that journalism plays in society.<p>When it comes to massively collaborative investigation, the key thing is _process_, not product. Even though it has been tried unsuccessfully or semi-successfully many times (ex, old school WikiLeaks, OpenWatch, WikiNews, MuckRock), I still think that this is absolutely the problem that should be focused on.<p>The product of this investigation shouldn't be an article with mass market appeal, but really high-quality information that is useful for decision makers in relevant fields.<p>I think in terms of what is needed of tools to be developed and used, the keys are: transparency, data science, and communications process. Various initiatives have been successfully cobbled together using Google Docs, Facebook and Slack, but these are usually projects with finite scope and a handful of participants. Nothing has ever come close to the kind of impact and reach that Wikipedia has had.<p>I currently run the service <a href="https://pubmail.io" rel="nofollow">https://pubmail.io</a> as a tool for investigators and reporters to be more transparent in their email correspondence. Additional tools I'd like to see are tools for aggregating, combining and slicing relevant datasets for interesting patterns, and a central hub for mission-driven investigative collaboration. This is what my startup made, but it turns out that this is not a very capital-friendly or profit-friendly idea, so I think it would require a patron like Jimbo to really make this happen  in a scalable, impactful way.<p>Still, I wsh this endeavor all the best of luck and hope that it pushes the needle in the right direction.