[11] The site opened to the public in October 2017, with a focus on "political, business and economic news, bolstered by weekly in-depth articles".

[20] Wales intended for the project to help fight fake news online; he was reportedly motivated to address this problem after hearing the Counselor to the U.S. president, Kellyanne Conway, use the expression 'alternative facts' during an interview in January 2017.

[25] People named as involved in the project as advisors to Wales included Lily Cole, Jeff Jarvis, Guy Kawasaki, and Lawrence Lessig.

[28] In a Medium post published in May 2017, WikiTribune said it had met its funding goal, but would not start operations until later that year:[9] Despite lots of confused comments, the end of the crowdfunding campaign doesn't mean an instantaneous launch.

We’ll do it faster if we can, but only if we can do it right.In a Medium post published in July 2017, WikiTribune introduced three of their initial ten journalists as Holly Brockwell, Harry Ridgewell, and Linh Nguyen.

LaFrance thought the plan was over-ambitious as a staff of ten was insufficient to cover global news stories and managing volunteer input would be time-consuming.

[30] Andrew Lih, a researcher at the American University's school of communication, expected WikiTribune's hybrid approach to be more successful than the volunteer-only model of Wikinews: "You have an operational command structure that’s based on full-time staff.

"[31] Sarah Baxter, deputy editor of the Sunday Times, addressed WikiTribune in the newspaper in April 2017 in "Wikipedia won't break real news, just tweak it".

After critical remarks on the reliability of Wikipedia, she said: "It's the warp and weft of debate in the free press, whether digital or print, that gets to the heart of the truth, not the wacky wisdom of self-appointed crowds.

"[32] Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, reviewed coverage of the project four days after the initial announcement.

She thought that WikiTribune would duplicate work which was already being done and gave examples such as David Fahrenthold's Pulitzer prize-winning coverage of the United States presidential election for the Washington Post, during which he used Twitter to engage with the public.

[33] Zahera Harb, a lecturer in journalism at City University of London, questioned the site's reliance on unpaid volunteers, saying, "I see a model closer to 'exploitation' than anything else."