Better to discuss how the WikiTribune has morphed into another plain old Wikimedia news under that umbrella moniker that already exists. I was hoping for a real news outlet unfettered by ad spam and influencers, if it had and editorial opinion section included, fine, but separate from actual news reported stories. Well, that didn’t happen, I suspect like anything else in this modern world they just ran out of money but somehow can’t put this reality into words at this time. When my annual subscription date arrives next year around now, I won’t be there for that.
I think it’s just wildly ambitious project, the real downfall is the lack of categorising. People generally seek out news about their own country/vicinity. WikiTribune is a wonderfull resource, yet the lack of reliability of finding relevant topics is what I think discourages users nowadays.
In order to be attractive news can be either very current or very deep in analysis, fact checking and content. In the absence of either of those, sadly, the thing doesn’t fly. The lack of critical mass in contributions is jeopardizing an amazing experiment.
Not only ambitious but I think the real problem was the funding structure, that is they ran out of funding and all the posted REASONS for having to let go of the previous editorial staff, (you know journalists and editors and support staff), was telling us that at that time, ITS OVER, but that’s not the message we received is it?
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Alison Wheeler
Although funding and quality control issues may be to the fore in some people’s minds, I’d argue the basic reason why the WikiTribune concept hasn’t received the pick-up/buy-in one might have wanted is that most people are probably happy _enough_ with the options they presently have, whether that be online or offline (print,tv,radio). Without some good USP WT is in a similar position to print media trying to use paywalls and failing to find an audience – why should someone use ‘outlet W’ when outlets A and B are doing an adequate – for that user – job. And in our case especially as events which are regionally/globally newsworthy get fast neutral coverage on WP. Having news reports which are socially-constructed is a good concept, but begs the question why should others use it?
Better to discuss how the WikiTribune has morphed into another plain old Wikimedia news under that umbrella moniker that already exists. I was hoping for a real news outlet unfettered by ad spam and influencers, if it had and editorial opinion section included, fine, but separate from actual news reported stories. Well, that didn’t happen, I suspect like anything else in this modern world they just ran out of money but somehow can’t put this reality into words at this time. When my annual subscription date arrives next year around now, I won’t be there for that.
Edited: 2019-10-09 15:46:17 By Tim Colby (talk | contribs) + 10 Characters .. + 1% change. (Note | Diff)
I think it’s just wildly ambitious project, the real downfall is the lack of categorising. People generally seek out news about their own country/vicinity. WikiTribune is a wonderfull resource, yet the lack of reliability of finding relevant topics is what I think discourages users nowadays.
In order to be attractive news can be either very current or very deep in analysis, fact checking and content. In the absence of either of those, sadly, the thing doesn’t fly. The lack of critical mass in contributions is jeopardizing an amazing experiment.
Not only ambitious but I think the real problem was the funding structure, that is they ran out of funding and all the posted REASONS for having to let go of the previous editorial staff, (you know journalists and editors and support staff), was telling us that at that time, ITS OVER, but that’s not the message we received is it?
Although funding and quality control issues may be to the fore in some people’s minds, I’d argue the basic reason why the WikiTribune concept hasn’t received the pick-up/buy-in one might have wanted is that most people are probably happy _enough_ with the options they presently have, whether that be online or offline (print,tv,radio). Without some good USP WT is in a similar position to print media trying to use paywalls and failing to find an audience – why should someone use ‘outlet W’ when outlets A and B are doing an adequate – for that user – job. And in our case especially as events which are regionally/globally newsworthy get fast neutral coverage on WP. Having news reports which are socially-constructed is a good concept, but begs the question why should others use it?