Blockchain, a technology that serves as an efficient way to share and store data linked and secured by cryptography, and has been popularized recently for managing Bitcoin transactions, is now being used as a sustainability model for the next wave of media outlets.
Block Club Chicago, founded by former DNAinfo Chicago journalists, is launching a news site in April that will focus on reporting local neighborhood news, very similar to how DNA operated before it was shut down in November.
But unlike DNA, Block Club won’t rely on advertising revenue. In fact, there won’t be any ads on its site. Instead, it will support itself off $5 per month subscriptions and through a partnership with Civil, a New York-based startup that has created a publishing platform built on blockchain technology.
The platform, which also goes live in April, will allow readers to pay for content using USD and other traditional currencies, but also with bitcoin, ether and CVL, a utility token Civil is developing that will play a vital role in the self-governance of newsrooms on the platform. The tokens are designed to economically incentivize activity that produces quality journalism.
Additionally, the platform will permanently archive all content, meaning it cannot be deleted by any one entity, a concern had by DNA reporters when the site was shut down.
“We share a similar vision about news,” said Shamus Toomey, DNAinfo Chicago's former managing editor and the editor-in-chief of Block Club. “It was a great pairing because they needed people like us, and frankly, we needed someone like them that could help us with the technology side. They’re building the platform. They’re building out our site. And they’re providing us with top notch business modeling.”
The other two Block Club co-founders are Jen Sabella, DNA’s former deputy editor, who will serve as Block Club’s director of strategy, and Stephanie Lulay, DNA’s former senior editor, who will serve as managing editor.
Civil was founded in 2017 by former journalists from outlets like DNAinfo New York, Google News and ABC. It raised $5 million from blockchain venture studio ConsenSys in October, funding that will help support the first newsrooms operating on the platform. Besides Block Club, Civil is working with seven other newsrooms, including Popula, an alternative news and politics outlet, and Sludge, an investigative outlet that aims to reveal how “special interests have captured America's political system.”
“Blockchain has emerged as a really compelling, enabling solution to introduce a new funding model that we think can really drive a new shift,” said Matt Coolidge, co-founder and communications lead at Civil. “We’re incredibly passionate about trying to introduce a new model that really focuses on support between journalists and readers that takes advertisers and other third parties out of the equation. We think this can work if we build up a marketplace of like-minded newsrooms and we just essentially stay out of their way.”
Civil has a team of 13 employees, mostly comprised of journalists, engineers and designers. Of the $5 million they’ve raised, about $1 million has been divided into grants given to the newsrooms they’re working with.
In addition to its funding from Civil, Block Club Chicago has raised nearly $140,000 in a Kickstarter campaign it launched earlier this month. It quickly surpassed its goal in the first 24 hours that the campaign was live, allowing them to hire an additional reporter. They currently have a staff of nine, six of whom are reporters. They also have a slew of contributors, Toomey said.
“Our plan is to keep the topics, tone and coverage as similar as possible to DNAinfo," he said, adding that when the site goes live in April, Block Club will already have more than 2,000 subscribers. "We’ve heard from our readers in the months since we’ve closed that we really connected with them.”
