But a constantly updating ledger can have other purposes. It can be good for contracts! And tracking where food comes from!

Perhaps it will save journalism, too?

Nov. 1, 2018

Alas, the Blockchain Won’t Save Journalism After All

Hype around the technology has led to incomprehensible applications of it.

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Civil Media Company was introduced earlier this year as both a media platform and a network, to be owned and operated by journalists and concerned citizens in tandem. It was an exciting proposal. Its technology (powered by the blockchain!) would churn under dozens of independent newsrooms, its machinery creating a new, utopian model, free from the clutches of miserly businessmen or politically compromised publishers threatening to gum up the works.

“We believe that the ad-driven business model is slowly killing good journalism — which is itself a critical foundation for free, democratic societies,” wrote one of the company’s founders, Matt Coolidge, in one of many, many, many blog posts that have been written trying to explain Civil. “So, we’re introducing a new model.”

Fundamental to the model was an option for readers: They could buy into Civil, with a Civil-specific crypto token, which would somehow free journalists to take advantage of “self-governance” and “permanence,” Mr. Coolidge wrote. With this financing, Civil would be able to cut out advertisers, clickbaiters and all the other bad actors so often accused of screwing up journalism.

Civil took its currency to market in September for a month. In the end, it fell short of the minimum number of tokens it had hoped to sell by more than $6 million. Of the approximately $1.4 million worth of tokens the company did sell, about 80 percent was purchased by ConsenSys — the blockchain software company that underwrote Civil in the first place. It was as if an Olympic weight lifter said that, at a minimum, he’d be able to clean and jerk 400 pounds, and then did not manage to move the bar more than an inch off the ground.