John Stossel
John Stossel outside Fox Studios after a taping of Stossel, June 9, 2010.
Born	John F. Stossel (1947-03-06) March 6, 1947 (age 65) Chicago Heights, Illinois, U.S.
Education	B.A. in Psychology, Princeton University (1969)
Occupation	Journalist, author, columnist, reporter, TV presenter
Years active	1969–present[1]
Notable credit(s)	20/20 Stossel
Spouse	Ellen Abrams
Website
http://www.johnstossel.com/

John F. Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated by News Corp. He hosts a weekly news show on Fox Business, Stossel, which debuted on December 10, 2009. The show airs in prime time every Thursday, repeating on both Saturdays and Sundays. Stossel also regularly provides signature analysis, appearing on various Fox News shows, including weekly appearances on The O'Reilly Factor, in addition to writing the Fox News Blog, "John Stossel's Take".^[2]

Stossel practices advocacy journalism, often challenging conventional wisdom.^[3] His reporting style, which is a blend of commentary and reporting, reflects a libertarian political philosophy and his views on economics are largely supportive of the free market.^[4]

In his decades as a reporter, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards, including nineteen Emmy awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club.^[5] John Stossel is doctor honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín.^[6] Stossel has written two books recounting how his experiences in journalism shaped his socioeconomic views, Give Me a Break in 2004 and Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity in 2007.

Stossel began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV and later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City, before joining ABC News as a consumer editor and reporter on Good Morning America. Stossel went on to be an ABC News correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program 20/20, going on to become co-anchor.^[7]

ABC is reported to believe "his reporting goes against the grain of the established media and offers the network something fresh and different...[but] makes him a target of the groups he offends."^[8]

Early life[link]

John Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the younger of two sons,^[9] to a prominent Jewish family, and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka. He overcame a stuttering problem so he could become a reporter, and is now a supporter and advocate for the Stuttering Foundation of America. Stossel graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Psychology in 1969 and was a member of Princeton Tower Club while there. He began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon. Stossel later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City before joining ABC News in 1981 as consumer editor and reporter on Good Morning America.

Career[link]

[edit] 20/20

Stossel was named co-anchor of ABC News' 20/20 in May 2003. He joined the weekly news magazine program in 1981, initially as a correspondent. His "Give Me a Break" segments featured a skeptical look at subjects from government regulations and pop culture to censorship and unfounded fear. The series was spun off into a series of one-hour specials (which, Stossel stated in an interview with ReasonTV^[10] cost ABC half a million dollars per special), beginning in 1994, with titles including:

• "Give Me a Break" – regular segment
• You Can't Even Talk About It – 2009^[11]
• Bailouts and Bull (in association with ReasonTV) – 2009
• Age of Consent – 2009
• John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics – 2008
• Sex in America – 2008
• Sick in America, Whose Body Is It Anyway? – 2007
• Cheap In America – 2007
• Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity – 2007
• Cheap in America – 2006
• Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids – 2006^[12]
• Privilege in America: Who's Shutting You Out? – 2006
• War on Drugs: A War on Ourselves – 2002
• Freeloaders – 2001
• John Stossel Goes to Washington – Spring 2001
• Is America #1? – 1999
• Greed – 1999
• Common Sense – 1995
• Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?
• Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So
• Boys and Girls Are Different
• You Can't Say That!
• The Power of Belief

Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network[link]

In September 2009, it was announced that Stossel was leaving ABC News and joining Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. In addition to appearing on The O'Reilly Factor every Tuesday night, he now hosts a one-hour weekly program for Fox Business Network and a series of one-hour specials for Fox News Channel, as well as making regular guest appearances on Fox News programs.

The program, entitled Stossel, debuted December 10, 2009, on Fox Business Network. The program looks at consumer-focused topics, such as civil liberties, the business of health care, and free trade. His blog, "Stossel’s Take", is published on both FoxBusiness.com and FoxNews.com.^[13][14][15]

Publications[link]

Stossel has written three books. Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media is a 2005 autobiography from Harper Perennial documenting his career and philosophical transition from liberalism to libertarianism. It describes his opposition to government regulation, his belief in free market and private enterprise, support for tort reform, and advocacy for shifting social services from the government to private charities. It was a New York Times bestseller for 11 weeks.^[3] Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel – Why Everything You Know Is Wrong, which was published in 2007 by Hyperion, questions the validity of various conventional wisdoms, and argues that the belief he is conservative is untrue. On April 10, 2012, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, published Stossel's third book No, They Can't: Why Government Fails-But Individuals Succeed. It argues that government policies meant to solve problems instead produce new ones, and that free individuals and the private sector perform tasks more efficiently than the government does.^[16]

With financial support from the libertarian Palmer R. Chitester Fund, Stossel and ABC News launched a series of educational materials for public schools in 1999 entitled "Stossel in the Classroom".^[17][18] It was taken over in 2006 by the Center for Independent Thought and releases a new DVD of teaching materials annually. In 2006, Stossel and ABC released Teaching Tools for Economics, a video series based on the National Council of Economics Education standards.^[19]

Charity and other work[link]

Stossel often makes public appearances and speeches, advocating his brand of libertarian thought.^[20] Stossel explained at the end of the December 30, 2010 episode of Stossel that he gives away his earnings from these engagements to charity; they contribute 25% of his income. The three main groups he supports with his donations are the The Doe Fund, the Central Park Conservancy (on whose board he sits), and Student Sponsor Partners (SSP), which partners low-income high school students with donors who mentor the students and pay tuition for the students to attend private school (usually Catholic schools), which Stossel says have higher graduation rates than public schools.^[21]

Stossel and his former ABC News colleague Chris Cuomo are silent investors in Columbus Tavern, a restaurant on Columbus Avenue at 72nd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side.^[22][23][24]

Political and personal beliefs[link]

Contrarianism[link]

Stossel's news reports and writings attempt to debunk popular beliefs. His Myths and Lies series of 20/20 specials challenges a range of widely held beliefs. He also hosted The Power of Belief (October 6, 1998), an ABC News Special that focused on assertions of the paranormal and people's desire to believe. Another report outlined the belief that opposition to DDT is misplaced and that the ban on DDT has resulted in the deaths of millions of children,^[25] mostly in poor nations.^[26]

Libertarianism[link]

Stossel speaking at the Free State Project's New Hampshire Liberty Forum.

As a libertarian, Stossel says that he believes in both personal freedom^[27] and the free market. He frequently uses television airtime to advance these views and challenge viewers' distrust of free market capitalism and economic competition. He received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Francisco Marroquin University, a libertarian university in Guatemala, in 2008. He told The Oregonian, on October 26, 1994:

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.^[28]

I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.^[29]

Stossel argues that personal greed creates an incentive to work and to innovate.^[30] He has promoted school choice as a way to improve American schools, because he believes that when people are given a choice, they will choose the better schools for their children.^[31] Referring to educational tests that rank American students lower than others he says:

The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better.^[32]

Stossel has criticized government programs as inefficient, wasteful, and harmful.^[33] He has also criticized the American legal system, opining that it provides lawyers and vexatious litigators the incentive to file frivolous lawsuits indiscriminately, which Stossel contends often generate more wealth for lawyers than deserving clients, stifle innovation and personal freedoms, and cause harm to private citizens, taxpayers, consumers and businesses.^[34] Although Stossel concedes that some lawsuits are necessary in order to provide justice to people genuinely injured by others with greater economic power,^[35] he advocates the adoption in the U.S. of the English rule as one method to reduce the more abusive or frivolous lawsuits.^[36]

Stossel opposes corporate welfare, bailouts^[37] and the war in Iraq.^[5] He also opposes legal prohibitions against pornography, marijuana, gambling, ticket scalping, prostitution, homosexual activity, and assisted suicide,^[38] and believes most abortions should be legal.^[39] He favors replacing the income tax with the FairTax.^[40]

When President Barack Obama altered federal guidelines in April 2010 governing the employment of unpaid interns under the Fair Labor Standards Act,^[41] Stossel criticized the guidelines, appearing in a police uniform during an appearance on the Fox News program America Live, commenting, "I’ve built my career on unpaid interns, and the interns told me it was great – I learned more from you than I did in college." Asked why he did not pay them if they were so valuable, he said he could not afford to.^[42]

Regarding religion, Stossel identified himself as an agnostic in the December 16, 2010 episode of Stossel, explaining that he had no belief in God, but was open to the possibility.^[43]

Praise and criticism[link]

Awards[link]

Stossel has won 19 Emmy Awards. He was honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club, and has received the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the Peabody Award. In one year, according to Stossel in his book Give Me A Break, "I got so many Emmys, another winner thanked me in his acceptance speech 'for not having an entry in this category'".^[44] According to Stossel, when he was in favor of government intervention and skeptical of business he was deluged with awards, but in 2006 he stated, "They like me less... Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards."^[29] On April 23, 2012, Stossel was awarded the Chapman University Presidential Medal, by the current president, James Doti, and chancellor, Danielle Struppa. The award has only been presented to a handful of people over the past 150 years. ^[45]

Praise[link]

The Nobel Prize–winning Chicago School monetarist economist Milton Friedman lauded Stossel, stating: "Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety."^[46] Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes Magazine, described Stossel as riveting and "one of America’s ablest and most courageous journalists."^[46] P. J. O'Rourke, best-selling author of Eat the Rich and Parliament of Whores praised Stossel, stating:

... about John Stossel's fact-finding. He seeks the truths that destroy truisms, wields reason against all that's unreasonable, and ... puncture(s) sanctimonious idealism.... He makes the maddening mad. And Stossel’s tales of the outrageous are outrageously amusing.^[46]

An article published by the libertarian group Advocates for Self Government notes praise for Stossel.^[47] Independent Institute Research Analyst Anthony Gregory, writing on the libertarian blog, LewRockwell.com, described Stossel as a "heroic rogue... a media maverick and proponent of freedom in an otherwise statist, conformist mass media."^[48] Libertarian investment analyst Mark Skousen said Stossel is "a true libertarian hero".^[49]

Criticism and controversy[link]

Watchdog groups[link]

Liberal media organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America (MMfA), have criticized Stossel's work,^[50][51] for what was perceived by those groups as a lack of balance of coverage and distortion of facts. For example, Stossel was criticized for a segment on his October 11, 1999, show during which he argued that AIDS research has received too much funding, "25 times more than on Parkinson's, which kills more people." FAIR responded that, "In fact, AIDS killed more than 16,000 people in the United States in 1999," whereas Parkinson's averaged "a death toll in the United States of less than 4,000 per year."^[52]

However, the Centers for Disease Control National Vital Statistics Reports do not support FAIR's claim. The CDC reported that HIV/AIDS killed 14,802 Americans in 1999, compared to 14,593 who succumbed to Parkinson's.^[53] The following year the order was reversed, with 14,478 dying from HIV/AIDS, and 15,682 from Parkinson's.^[54]

Accusation of conflict of interest[link]

In a February 2000 Salon.com feature on Stossel entitled "Prime-time propagandist", David Mastio wrote that Stossel has a conflict of interest in donating profits from his public speaking engagements to, among others, a non-profit called "Stossel in the Classroom" which includes material for use in schools, some of which uses material made by Stossel.^[55][56]

Galbraith and Stossel[link]

University of Texas economist James K. Galbraith has alleged that Stossel in his September 1999 special, Is America #1?, used an out of context clip of Galbraith to convey the notion that Galbraith advocated the adoption by Europe of the free market economics practiced by the United States, when in fact, Galbraith actually advocated that Europe adopt some of the United States' social benefit transfer mechanisms such as Social Security, which is the economically opposite view. Stossel denied any misrepresentation of Galbraith's views, and stated that it was not his intention to convey that Galbraith agreed with all of the special's ideas, but re-edited that portion of the program for its September 2000 repeat, in which Stossel paraphrased, "Even economists who like Europe's policies, like James Galbraith, now acknowledge America's success."^[57][58][59]

Organic vegetables[link]

A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on 20/20 included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by E. coli bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story's producer backed Stossel's recollection that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, uncorrected, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in The New York Times confirmed the Environmental Working Group's claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported. However, he asserted that the gist of his report had been accurate.^{[60][61][62][63][64]}

Frederick K. Price[link]

In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, 20/20 aired a clip of Rev. Frederick K. Price, a TV minister, that was originally broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. Price alleged that the clip portrayed him describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when he was actually telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error.^[65][66] In August 2010, a lower court's dismissal of the minister's defamation suit against ABC, Price v. Stossel, was overturned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.^[67]

"Sick Sob Stories"[link]

In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal in September 2007 called "Sick Sob Stories", Stossel described the case of Tracy and Julie Pierce that was explored in Michael Moore's film, Sicko.^[68] Julie Pierce criticized Stossel, saying her husband would have been saved by the Canadian health care system, and she thought Stossel should have interviewed her and her doctor before writing about them.^[69] Stossel expressed sympathy, but said she had been misled to believe the treatment was routinely available in Canada. He said that the treatment is also considered "experimental" in Canada, and is provided there even more rarely than in the U.S.^[70]

Global warming[link]

He challenges the notion that man-made global warming would have net negative consequences, pointing to assertedly warmer periods in human history.^[71] Central to his argument is the idea that groups and individuals get much more public attention, donations, and government funding when they proclaim "this will be terrible" than groups that say "this is nothing to worry about." He points to groups like the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and to activists such as Rachel Carson and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore as examples of environmental scaremongers.^[72]

In 2001, the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting criticized Stossel's reportage of global warming in his documentary, Tampering with Nature, for using "highly selective...information" that gave "center stage to three dissenters from among the 2,000 members of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which recently released a report stating that global temperatures are rising almost twice as fast as previously thought."^[73]

In a 2006 discussion hosted by the Fraser Institute, Stossel stated that he accepts that global warming has occurred in the past century, that it has been about one degree Celsius, and that man-made emissions "may be part of the cause." Nevertheless he groups environmental groups with astrologers and psychics in his second book, Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity. He stated that the "myths" come in with the debate about proposed solutions to reduce global warming, which he argues will not solve the problem at all and will restrict people's freedom.^[5]

David Schultz incident[link]

On December 28, 1984, during an interview for 20/20 on professional wrestling, wrestler David Schultz struck Stossel after Stossel stated that he thought professional wrestling was "fake". Stossel stated that he suffered from pain and buzzing in his ears eight weeks after the assault.^[74] Stossel sued and obtained a settlement of $425,000 from the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In his book, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, he writes that he has come to regret doing so, having adopted the belief that lawsuits harm hundreds of innocent people.^[75][76] Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel on orders from Vince McMahon, the head of the then-WWF.^[77]

Personal life[link]

Stossel lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Abrams. They have two grown children.^[78]

Stossel's older brother, Thomas P. Stossel,^[9] is a hematologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital,^[79] and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He has served on the advisory boards of Merck, Biogen Idec and Dyax,^[80] as a senior fellow at the free-market Manhattan Institute,^[81] and as a trustee of the American Council on Science and Health.^[82]

Stossel's nephew is the journalist and magazine editor Scott Stossel.^[83]

See also[link]

• List of newspaper columnists

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Stossel

• Official website
• John Stossel at the Internet Movie Database
• Harper Collins (Publisher) – Biography at Publisher's website
• American Justice Partnership (December 12, 2005). "Special Interview...Steve Hantler (of) John Stossel" (17 minute MP3 audio). http://www.legalreforminthenews.com/Interviews/Stossel_Hantler_Interview.html. Retrieved October 14, 2007. 

Biographies and articles about Stossel[link]

• ABC News Biography
• Johnson, Peter. "Stossel's evolution from activist to contrarian angers some of his fans", USA Today, April 30, 2006
• "John Stossel: Myth-Buster", FrontPageMag.com
• Sullum, Jacob. "Risky Journalism: ABC's John Stossel bucks a fearful establishment" Reason, April 1997.

Articles by Stossel[link]

• John Stossel's 20/20 Web Page
• John Stossel's Newspaper Columns
• John Stossel's contributions to Reason Magazine
• "Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars" is an excerpt from his first book.
• John Stossel's Column on Creators.com

Jimmy Wales
Wales in December 2008
Born	Jimmy Donal Wales (1966-08-07) August 7, 1966 (age 45) Huntsville, Alabama, United States
Residence	London, United Kingdom[1]
Other names	Jimbo
Alma mater	Auburn University University of Alabama Indiana University Bloomington
Occupation	Internet entrepreneur, formerly a Financial trader
Title	President of Wikia, Inc. (2004–present) Chairman of Wikimedia Foundation (June 2003 – October 2006) Chairman Emeritus, Wikimedia Foundation (October 2006–present)
Successor	Florence Devouard
Board member of	Wikimedia Foundation Creative Commons Socialtext Sunlight Foundation (advisory board) MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (advisory board) CiviliNation[2]
Awards	see below
Signature
Website
www.jimmywales.com

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales ( /ˈdoʊnəl ˈweɪlz/; born August 7, 1966^[3]) is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company.^[4][5] Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, United States, where he attended Randolph School, a university-preparatory school, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance. While in graduate school, he taught at two universities, but left before completing a PhD in order to take a job in finance and later worked as the research director of a Chicago futures and options firm. In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis, a male-oriented web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. The company would provide the initial funding for the peer-reviewed free encyclopedia Nupedia (2000–2003) and its successor, Wikipedia.

On January 15, 2001, with Larry Sanger and others, Wales launched Wikipedia, a free, open content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity, and as Wikipedia’s public profile grew, he became the project’s promoter and spokesman. He is historically cited as a co-founder of Wikipedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation, declaring himself the sole founder.^[6][7] Wales serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organization he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. In 2004, he co-founded Wikia, a for-profit wiki-hosting service. His role in creating Wikipedia, which has become the world’s largest encyclopedia, prompted Time magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world’s most influential people.

Early life and education[link]

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on August 7, 1966.^[3][8] His father, Jimmy,^[9] worked as a grocery store manager while his mother, Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran the House of Learning,^[10] a small private school in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education.^[10][11] As a child, Wales was a keen reader with an acute intellectual curiosity^[5] and, in what he credits to the influence of the Montessori method on the school’s philosophy of education, "spent lots of hours pouring [sic] over the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias." There were only four other children in Wales’ grade, so the school grouped together the first through fourth grade students and the fifth through eighth grade students. As an adult, Wales was sharply critical of the government’s treatment of the school, citing the “constant interference and bureaucracy and very sort of snobby inspectors from the state” as a formative influence on his political philosophy.^[12]

After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School,^[13] a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, graduating at sixteen.^[14] Wales said that the school was expensive for his family, but that "education was always a passion in my household... you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."^[12] He received his bachelor’s degree in finance from Auburn University. Wales then entered the PhD finance program at the University of Alabama before leaving with a master's degree to enter the PhD finance program at Indiana University.^[11][12][14] He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies but did not write the doctoral dissertation required for a PhD, something he ascribed to boredom.^[11][12]

Career[link]

Chicago Options Associates and Bomis[link]

The staff of Wales’ internet company Bomis photographed in Summer 2000. Wales is third from the left in the back row, with his then-wife Christine.

In 1994, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago, Illinois.^[12][15][16] Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage and he wrote computer codes during his leisure time. During his studies in Alabama, he had become an obsessive player of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)—a type of virtual role-playing game—and thereby experienced the potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects.^[14][17] Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering of Netscape in 1995, and having accumulated capital through "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations",^[10] he decided to leave the realm of financial trading and became an Internet entrepreneur.^[14] In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis,^[10][18] a web portal featuring user-generated webrings and, for a time, erotic photographs.^[19] Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim magazine;^[11][12][20] The Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful, however.^[10][11][21]

Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia[link]

Philosopher Larry Sanger, whom Wales hired as editor-in-chief of Nupedia.

Though Bomis had struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the funding to pursue his greater passion, an online encyclopedia.^[11] While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy of Objectivism in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger, a skeptic of the philosophy.^[5] The two had engaged in detailed debate on the subject on Wales' list and then on Sanger's, eventually meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends.^[5] Years later, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia project and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it,^[17] Wales hired Sanger—who at that time was a doctoral student in philosophy at Ohio State University—to be its editor-in-chief, and in March 2000, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, was launched.^[11][12] The intent behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics, and to sell advertising alongside the entries in order to make profit.^[5] The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.^[22]

The idea was to have thousands of volunteers writing articles for an online encyclopedia in all languages. Initially we found ourselves organizing the work in a very top-down, structured, academic, old-fashioned way. It was no fun for the volunteer writers because we had a lot of academic peer review committees who would criticize articles and give feedback. It was like handing in an essay at grad school, and basically intimidating to participate in.

—Jimmy Wales on the Nupedia project New Scientist, January 31, 2007^[23]

In an October 2009 speech, Wales recollects attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert C. Merton, but being too intimidated to submit his first draft to the prestigious finance professors who were to peer review it, even though he had published a paper on Option Pricing Theory and was comfortable with the subject matter. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.^[24]

In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a wiki by extreme programming enthusiast Ben Kovitz after explaining to Kovitz the slow pace of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its onerous submission process.^[25] Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia's bottleneck.^[25] Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001.^[25] The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers. The majority of Nupedia’s experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateur content with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia’s information and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia.^[26] Thus, the wiki project, dubbed "Wikipedia" by Sanger,^[6] went live at a separate domain five days after its creation.^[16][21]

Wikipedia[link]

While Sanger saw Wikipedia primarily as a tool to aid Nupedia development, Wales felt that Wikipedia might have the potential to become the truly collaborative, open effort of knowledge building he dreamed of.^[27][28][29] Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia initiative.^[16][17] Wales feared that at worst, it might produce "complete rubbish".^[16] To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed.^[15][17] Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the free culture movement, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source movement.^[26] Wales has said that he was initially so worried with the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awake during the night and monitor what was being added.^[30][31] Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.^[11]

Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project.^[6][32] The broader idea he ascribes to Wales, remarking in a 2005 memoir for Slashdot that "the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis", adding, "the actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on."^[33] Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002;^[34] Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March 1 of that year.^[35][36] In the early years, Wales had supplied the financial backing for the project,^{[clarification needed][32][37]} and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a nonprofit foundation were advanced instead.^[38]

Controversy[link]

Wales has asserted that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia,^[7] and has publicly disputed Sanger’s designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002.^[39][40] In August of that year, Wales identified himself as "co-founder" of Wikipedia.^[41] Sanger assembled on his personal webpage an assortment of links that appear to confirm the status of Sanger and Wales as co-founders.^[6][42] For example, Sanger and Wales are historically cited or described in early news citations and press releases as co-founders.^[6] Wales was quoted by The Boston Globe as calling Sanger’s claim "preposterous" in February 2006,^[43] and called "the whole debate silly" in an April 2009 interview.^[44]

In late 2005, Wales edited his own biographical entry on the English Wikipedia. Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.^[45][46] Sanger commented that "having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will out."^[20][47] Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company’s products.^[16][20] Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content,^[20] he apologized for editing his own biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.^[20][47]

Role[link]

Wales delivering the keynote speech (“The State of the Wiki”) at Wikimania, the conference for Wikimedia projects, in Buenos Aires in 2009.

In a 2004 interview with Slashdot, Wales outlined his vision for Wikipedia: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we're doing."^[48] Although his formal designation is board member and chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales' social capital within the Wikipedia community has accorded him a status that has been characterized as benevolent dictator, constitutional monarch and spiritual leader.^[49][50][51] He was also the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years.^[5] The growth and prominence of Wikipedia made Wales an Internet celebrity^[52]. Although he had never traveled outside North America prior to the site's founding, his participation in the Wikipedia project has seen him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face.^[5][53]

Despite involvement in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his role within Wikipedia, telling The New York Times in 2008 that "Dialing down is not an option for me ... Not to be too dramatic about it, but, 'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal."^[50] In May 2010, the BBC reported that Wales had relinquished many of his technical privileges on Wikimedia Commons (a Wikipedia sister project that hosts much of its multimedia content) after criticism by the project’s volunteer community over what they saw as Wales' hasty and undemocratic approach to deleting sexually explicit images he believed "appeal solely to prurient interests".^[54]

Wikimedia Foundation[link]

Wales appearing as a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees at Wikimania 2007.

In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit organization founded in St. Petersburg, Florida and later headquartered on the West Coast of the United States, in San Francisco, California.^[55][56] All intellectual property rights and domain names pertaining to Wikipedia were moved to the new foundation,^[57] whose purpose is to establish general policy for the encyclopedia and its sister projects.^[17] Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees since it was formed and was its official chairman from 2003 through 2006.^[58] Since 2006 he has been accorded the honorary title of Chairman Emeritus and holds the board-appointed "community founder" seat.^[59] His work for the foundation, including his appearances to promote it at computer and educational conferences, has always been unpaid.^[19] Wales has often joked that donating Wikipedia to the foundation was both the "dumbest and the smartest" thing he had done. On one hand, he estimated that Wikipedia was worth US$3 billion; on the other, he weighed his belief that the donation made its success possible.^{[23][57][60][61]}

Wales' association with the foundation has led to controversy. In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied.^[62] Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past".^[63] Later in March 2008, it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".^[64][65]

Wikia and later pursuits[link]

In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the WMF Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company Wikia.^[15] Wikia is a wiki farm—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website. It hosts some of the largest wikis outside Wikipedia, including Memory Alpha (devoted to Star Trek) and Wookieepedia (Star Wars).^[66] Another service offered by Wikia was Wikia Search, an open source search engine intended to challenge Google and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it is created into the search engine’s operations,^[67] but the project was abandoned in March 2009.^[68] Wales stepped down as Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor Gil Penchina, a former vice president and general manager at eBay, on June 5, 2006.^[69] Penchina declared Wikia to have reached profitability in September 2009.^[70]In addition to his role at Wikia, Wales is a public speaker represented by the Harry Walker Agency.^[71][72] He has also participated in a celebrity endorsement campaign for the Swiss watch maker Maurice Lacroix.^[73]

On November 4, 2011, Wales delivered an hour-long address, at The Sage Gateshead in the United Kingdom, to launch the 2011 Free Thinking Festival on BBC Radio Three.^[74] His speech, which was entitled, "The Future of the Internet", was largely devoted to Wikipedia. Twenty days later, on November 24, Wales appeared on the British topical debate television program Question Time.^[75]

Political and economic views[link]

Wales in June 2008

Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core",^[67] referring to the philosophy developed by writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th century emphasizing reason, individualism, and capitalism. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead while an undergraduate,^[12] and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy".^[5][76] Though he has stated that the philosophy "colours everything I do and think",^[5] he has said "I think I do a better job—than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists—of not pushing my point of view on other people."^[77] When asked by Brian Lamb about Rand’s influence on him in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity and "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles.^[12] An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason.^[11] In that profile, he described his political views as "center-right".

The January/February 2006 issue of Maximum PC reported that Wales had refused to comply with a request from the People's Republic of China to censor "politically sensitive" articles in Wikipedia. Other big business Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft had already yielded to Chinese government pressure. Wales let it be known that he would rather see companies such as Google follow suit on Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information.^[78] In 2010, he criticized whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its editor in chief Julian Assange, saying that their publication of Afghan war documents "could be enough to get someone killed," and he expressed irritation at their use of the name "wiki":^[79] "What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing...".^[80]

Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek's essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate,^[16] as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project".^[11] Hayek argued that information is decentralized – that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively – and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge rather than by a central authority.^[11] Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement (which advocated that software be free and distributed). He was moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", an essay and later book by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond, which "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration."^[16] From his background in finance and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game theory and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity, a fascination to which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia.^[81] He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating "[t]hat participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".^[53]

Personal life[link]

Wales with his second wife Christine

Wales has been married and divorced twice.^[12][53] In the summer of 2012, he is planning to marry Kate Garvey,^[82] Tony Blair's former diary secretary, whom he met in Davos, Switzerland.^[83] He has two daughters.

At the age of 20, Wales married Pam, a co-worker at a grocery-store in Alabama.^[53] He met his second wife, Christine Rohan, through a friend in Chicago while she was working as a steel trader for Mitsubishi.^[12][14] The couple were married in Monroe County, Florida in March 1997,^[84] and had a daughter before separating.^[12][53] Wales moved to San Diego in 1998, and after being dissuaded by the housing market there, relocated in 2002 to St. Petersburg, Florida,^[37] where he lived as of 2007^[update].^[14][85]

Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian conservative columnist Rachel Marsden in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography.^[86] After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest, Wales stated that there had been a relationship but that it was over and claimed that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia,^[87][88] a claim which was disputed by Marsden.^[89]

Wales is an atheist. In an interview with Big Think, he claimed his personal philosophy is firmly rooted in reason and he is a complete non-believer.^[90]

Honors, awards and positions[link]

Wales with the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize on January 26, 2011

Wales is a member of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School^[12] and the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence,^[91] the Board of Directors at Creative Commons,^[92] Socialtext,^[93] and Hunch.com,^[94] and former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008.^[95]

Wales was listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the Time 100 in 2006^[96] and number 12 in Forbes "The Web Celebs 25".^[97] Wales has also given a lecture in the Stuart Regen Visionary series at New Museum which "honors special individuals who have made major contributions to art and culture, and are actively imagining a better future"^[98] and by the World Economic Forum as one of the "Young Global Leaders" of 2007.^[99] In April 2011, Wales served on the jury of the Tribeca Film Festival.^[100]

Wales has received a Pioneer Award,^[101] the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize in 2011,^[102][103] the Monaco Media Prize,^[104] the 2009 Nokia Foundation annual award,^[105] the Business Process Award at the 7th Annual Innovation Awards and Summit by The Economist,^[106] the 2008 Global Brand Icon of the Year Award,^[107] and on behalf of the Wikimedia project the Quadriga award of Werkstatt Deutschland for A Mission of Enlightenment.^[108]Wales has also received honorary degrees from Knox College,^[109] Amherst College,^[110] Stevenson University,^[110][111] Argentina's Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21,^[112] and Russia's MIREA University.^[113]

See also[link]

Meta has related information at: List of Wikipedias

• The Wikipedia Revolution
• User:Jimbo Wales

Published work[link]

References[link]