Jimmy Wales said the site had failed to engage contributors in the way he had intended

A crowdsourced news website from the founder of Wikipedia has laid off its reporters, a year after it launched with a promise to reinvent journalism.

Jimmy Wales announced Wikitribune last year, promising to publish “news by the people and for the people” by pairing professional journalists with volunteer fact-checkers. The model was inspired by the collaborative approach that has made Wikipedia, which he co-founded in 2001, one of the most popular sites on the internet.

“The news is broken, but we have figured out how to fix it,” Mr Wales, 52, proclaimed in April last year, dismissing the scepticism of media academics who warned that the “wiki” model, whereby anyone can add or edit content, would not work for investigative journalism.

The site, which is