Announcing our new editor

Please welcome Peter Bale

Since we hit our launch target, we’ve been busy looking for the right people to build Team WikiTribune. The first hires we make will be the foundation of our company culture, the faces of the company, and the creators of the first content we put out into the world. So our standards are very high.

Image: ORF

We’re halfway to recruiting the ten journalists you funded, but after an exhaustive search, we’re happy to announce we’ve found our launch editor in Peter Bale.

Peter has a long history of international journalism projects, having previously been CEO of the Center for Public Integrity: an investigative journalism nonprofit in Washington DC. The CPI recently incorporated the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, best known for the groundbreaking Panama Papers project.

Image: CNN

Peter joined the CPI from CNN International, where he was Vice President and General Manager of Digital. He’s also worked at Microsoft, where he ran the UK MSN site and then MSN content worldwide. Before that, he was a correspondent and editor for Reuters across Asia and Europe, as well as having run The Times and Sunday Times’ websites in London. He is the current President of the Global Editors’ Network, an alliance of over 30,000 journalists devoted to newsroom innovation.

In short, he knows what he’s doing. We were specifically looking for someone with experience not only of global and digital news, but also similar types of organisation to WikiTribune — either nonprofits, or innovative journalism projects designed to change the status quo.

Peter ticks all those boxes, and a fair few more besides.

A word from the editor

We asked Peter what enticed him to work with us, and he said:

“WikiTribune promises to be one of the most innovative news platforms at a time when journalism is facing immense problems of trust and shifting business models. It is exciting to have the opportunity to help shape a news product committed to high-quality journalism and the engagement of a wide community of contributors. “Jimmy Wales has a history of creating web products with immense social value built on a commitment to engaging a global community of contributors. He understands the value of journalism to society and at the same time wants to revolutionise the approach to reporting on and explaining the big issues of our time. “It’s a privilege to work with him and a team of innovative journalists, developers and communicators to launch WikiTribune.”

We’re still on track for launch around September, but in the meantime, you can follow Peter on Twitter here, and please give him a warm welcome to the WikiTribune community.