London — The founder of online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has announced plans for a crowd-funded news website offering stories by journalists and volunteers working together, an initiative he hopes will counter the spread of fake news. Jimmy Wales said the new platform, Wikitribune, would be free to read and carry no advertising, instead relying on supporters to fund it, while the accuracy of its articles would be easily verifiable as source material would be published. "The news is broken, but we’ve figured out how to fix it," Wales said in a promotional video posted on the website’s homepage, which does not yet carry any news stories. The page indicates the platform will go live in 29 days. The initial goal is to raise sufficient funds to hire 10 professional journalists. The website is set-up to encourage supporters to give $10 a month, but the amount and frequency of gifts can easily be modified. The online proliferation of fake news, some of it generated for profit and some for po...
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