When NewsNation reporter Leland Vittert was diagnosed with autism as a child, his father did not treat it as a disability but rather a tool to be sharpened — and Vittert believes this was a huge factor when it came to finding success as an adult.

And while Vittert credits his upbringing for his ability to overcome adversity, it was his college experience that led him to realize he needed to change, not the world.

“I think college was the first time I started realizing that I needed to change, right? Because my dad spent, you know, all those nights that I was so upset saying, ‘Look, when you get older, the same qualities that are making you ostracized and bullied and having all these issues are the qualities that’s going to make you successful later in life,’” Vittert tells Stuckey.

“He was correct in many ways. He did not tell me in eighth grade that an eighth grade middle school classroom is great training for a Washington newsroom, which would later turn out to be very true. Still is,” he continues.

His dad often told him a story about being blackballed from all the fraternities while he was in college.

“He never got a bid at any one of the fraternities that was on campus. And it was a way of sort of explaining to me, right, that he understood the isolation. He understood what I was going through. And the same thing happened to me,” Vittert tells Stuckey.

Vittert was told that he wasn’t getting a bid and called his dad that night.

“It’s snowing at Northwestern, bitterly cold. Tears are freezing on my face. And I called my dad. I said, ‘I’m just like you.’ And then I said to dad, I said, ‘I need to understand that it may not just be everybody else. I’m going to have to change.’ And that really became the college experience,” he explains.

“To me, going to college wasn’t really about learning economics, which I majored in, or journalism, which journalism school is pretty useless. But it was about learning as a person and trying to put all of those lessons that my dad taught me into effect,” he continues.

Vittert found that with hard work, he was able to channel who he was into what he wanted to be — and he found that journalism was one of those industries “that just yield to hard work.”

“If you just work hard and outwork everybody, that is of enormous value in journalism,” he says.

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Wikipedia has recently come under the microscope. I take some credit for this, as a co-founder of Wikipedia and a longtime vocal critic of the knowledge platform.

In September, I nailed (virtually) “Nine Theses About Wikipedia” to the digital door of Wikipedia and started a round of interviews about it, beginning with Tucker Carlson. This prompted Elon Musk to announce Grokipedia’s impending launch the very next day. And a national conversation evolved from there, with left- and right-leaning voices complaining about the platform’s direction or my critique of it.

As long as Wikipedia remains open, it is entirely possible for those who think differently to get involved.

As its 25th anniversary approaches, Wikipedia clearly needs reform. Not only does the platform have a long history of left-wing bias, but the purveyors of that bias — administrators, everyday editors, and others — stubbornly cling to their warped worldview and vilify those who dare to contest it.

The “Nine Theses” are the project’s first-ever thoroughgoing reform proposal. Among the ideas:

Allow multiple, competing articles per topic. Stop ideological blacklisting of sources. Restore the original neutrality policy. Reveal the identities of the most powerful managers. End unfair, indefinite blocking. Adopt a formal legislative process.

Such ideas were bound to be a hard sell on Wikipedia. It has become institutionally ossified.

Nevertheless, I was delighted that the discussion of the theses has been robust, without much further prodding from me. Following the launch, Jimmy Wales actually stepped into the fray on the so-called talk page of an article called “Gaza genocide,” chiding the participants for violating Wikipedia’s neutrality policy. I chimed in as well. But the criticism was thrown back in our faces.

This brings me to the deeper problem: Wikipedia is stuck in its ways. How can it possibly be reformed when so many of its contributors like the bias, the anonymous leadership, the ease of blocking ideological foes, and other aspects of dysfunction? Reform seems impossible.

Yet there is one realistic way that we can make progress toward reform.

Above all else, those who care should get involved in Wikipedia. The total number of people who are really active on Wikipedia is surprisingly small. The number editing 100 times in any given month is in the low thousands, and this does not amount to that much time — perhaps one or two hours per week. Those who treat it as a part-time or full-time job — and so have real day-to-day influence — number in the hundreds.

In interviews, I have been urging the outcasts to converge on Wikipedia. You might think this is code for saying that conservatives and libertarians should try to stage a coup, but that is not so. Hindus and Israelis, among others, have also complained of being left out in recent years. The problem is an entrenched ruling class. As long as Wikipedia remains open, it is entirely possible for those who think differently to get involved.

RELATED: Wikipedia editors are trying to scrub the record clean of Iryna Zarutska’s slaughter by violent thug

Photo by Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images

If you are a conservative or libertarian who is concerned about the slanted framing of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, get involved. If you are a classical liberal who is alarmed by the anti-Semitism within Wikipedia — like Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz — it is time to make your presence felt. Wherever you may fall on the ideological spectrum, I call on good-faith citizens to become engaged editors who take productive discourse seriously, rather than scapegoating “the other side.”

Even a dozen new editors could make a difference, let alone hundreds or thousands who might be reading this column. Given that Wikipedia attracts billions of readers, in addition to featuring prominently in Google Search, Google Gemini, and elsewhere, improving the platform will strengthen our collective access to high-quality information across the board. It will bring us closer to truth.

So how do we solve the Wikipedia problem? With you, me, and all of us — individual action at scale.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

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