Hoping to pioneer a new business model, Civil Media opened a sale of its CVL token earlier this month, offering $24 million worth. The idea is to use blockchain technology to finance an old profession — journalism — that has been losing ground and advertising market share to Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon.
A Brooklyn-based startup, Civil is building a network of user-supported newsrooms and a marketplace for sustainable journalism. Fourteen newsrooms have launched on the Civil platform including Popula, Sludge, and Cannabis Wire.
Others plan to launch including The Blackness, a newsroom founded by Hollywood star, activist and writer Erika Alexander. She teamed up with Civil to create a newsroom that features “longform investigative journalism from marginalized communities.”
Thank you Ann Brown @Moguldom: Erika Alexander's Color Farm Uses Blockchain To Create Diverse Content https://t.co/hAfRurfu6c via @moguldom
— Erika Alexander (@EAlexTheGreat) September 27, 2018
Civil wants to help news outlets raise money from readers and investors while also providing tools to monetize journalism in an ad-free environment. Readers who buy Civil’s cryptocurrency tokens, CVL, can “vote” on whether a news outlet is doing its job well, and in an ethical way, NBC reported.
Blockchain unlocks two features that have allowed Civil to build a marketplace of great journalists and great newsrooms, said Civil co-founder Matt Coolidge. One is self-governance — the ability to introduce a new incentive structure. The other is permanence.
The immutability of the blockchain ensures that “archives are permanently stored in a decentralized fashion where there’s no one single point of failure, there’s not one single actor, a concentrated group or oligarchy of very powerful folks that can make the unilateral decision to just unplug the archives,” Coolidge said during a panel discussion at SXSW 2018.
The CVL token sale is LIVE. Learn more at https://t.co/KkdBTK0g5F — and, when you're ready, register at https://t.co/Mr1Cy5ku5B
Why? To support a new economy for creating, distributing and supporting journalism from folks like this: https://t.co/HASvZVJDGX
— Matt Coolidge (@mattcoolidge) September 19, 2018
Excited to say that today I bought 38 CVL. I am so excited to be part of this project. #Civil #journalism @manoushz @jpoyant @Join_Civil pic.twitter.com/9LrZDElEY7
— Kyle Reynolds (@KRNaturalPhoto) September 21, 2018
Civil has raised $5 million in capital from ConsenSys, the largest venture production studio in the blockchain ecosystem. ConsenSys was founded by Joseph Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum, in 2014. Its technologists and entrepreneurs are building infrastructure, apps, and practices on the Ethereum platform to enable a decentralized world.
“What we’re doing with Civil is trying to build a platform that exists for the sole purpose of promoting ethical journalism, of being a home for the independent network of individually owned and operated newsrooms,” Coolidge said.
The tokens are meant to create a shared community responsibility between all of Civil’s publishers, NBC reported. Civil has partnered with the Associated Press, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, and the European Journalism Centre, among others.
Learn How Civil’s Decentralized Newsrooms Are Reviving Journalism@Join_Civil https://t.co/Ew9W4X0DUS
— Ethereum Network (@EthereumNetw) September 20, 2018
Initially, Civil entered the marketplace for local, international, policy and investigative journalism, Coolidge said during a Consensys-sponsored event, Moguldom reported:
“We see those as arguably the four beats that have been hardest hit by two decades of mass consolidation. They’re very underserved markets in this day and age when the institution of journalism is being vilified by the top levels of government as the enemy and not a critical hedge against overreach and corruption. They underpin democracy. I think we see those as critically important. If we can build our reputation initially as a marketplace serving those very in-demand markets, we think there should be a lot of people excited about us.”
Just finished @Join_Civil webinar on learning how to purchase Civil Tokens & supporting quality journalism. Being new to #crypto and a grad student @newmarkjschool Im very curious about this new peer-to-peer revenue model between journalists & consumers #socialj19 #newmarkjschool pic.twitter.com/1GhDg7zyAC
— Diara J. (@CuriousScout) September 20, 2018
Content has always cost money to produce.
Netflix. Hulu. Spotify. Amazon Prime. HBO Now.
People pay monthly subscriptions to them in order to enjoy their content.
Newsrooms have subscriptions for the same reason.
The concept isn’t difficult. Pay for your journalism.
— Alex V Hernandez (@AVHndz) September 22, 2018
On @Join_Civil and @zigzagpod and jumping in the deep end: "I have no idea if it will work. But I’m interested, and I’d rather participate than watch from the sidelines." https://t.co/3uLFpMZ9L5
— Chloe F. Olewitz (@Colewitz) September 20, 2018
What will it look like to publish to #blockchain on Civil? One of Civil's super-talented designers, @picocassette, wrote a journalist-friendly overview to explain. https://t.co/FI06f7kEoM
— Civil (@Join_Civil) September 21, 2018
Civil’s growing community supports the idea of an ad-free marketplace for more sustainable journalism, Coolidge added.
Nushin Rashidian is the co-founder of Cannabiswire. “We’re bringing some watchdog and investigative journalism about the cannabis industry to the Civil platform,” Rashidian said during a panel discussion at SXSW 2018. “Cannabis is rich territory for serious journalism. Legalization raises urgent questions about regulation and law, technology and taxation, science and business, criminal justice and individual liberties. It stands at the intersection of a booming billion-dollar industry and promising advances in medicine, all while remaining federally illegal. That’s where Cannabis Wire comes in.”
