In our work as consultants, trainers, and reporters in Asia, we’ve become increasingly concerned about the anemic growth of media startups in the region. Given the big opportunities accorded by cheaper, more accessible technology, we find it baffling that Asia lacks a robust ecosystem around media startups.

Journalism isn’t broken. But technology has fundamentally changed traditional business models, content production, and its distribution.

We believe we’re in a golden age of media.

We now have the capability to connect with our audiences on more platforms than ever. We can target them with the content they want. We can also create new value that opens the door to more diversified revenue streams.

In Asia, this promise is still unfulfilled. With the size of our data-connected audiences, we should be swimming in new opportunities for media entrepreneurs.

The dream

We have an audacious dream. We want to help drive the creation of 100 media startups in Asia over the next 3 years. We want to do this by training, consulting, and funding.

And we can’t do it alone.

Today, we’re going to take a stab at solving this with The Civil Media Company, which is deploying blockchain and cryptoeconomics to help build a sustainable ecosystem for journalism around the world.

Splice and Civil will create a $1 million fund to catalyze the growth of media startups in Asia. Splice will manage this fund and make pre-seed, micro-investments to help entrepreneurs take their ideas to prototype stage, and with the support of this network and community, even further.

We’ll take a broad definition of the media equation.

Entrepreneurship is needed across the this new media stack — publishing, advertising, data, identities, privacy, and membership.

We’ll have more details in the next few weeks on how we’ll assess ideas and how we’ll make this happen across the region. We don’t have all the pieces together, but we would love to hear from you on what you’d like to see and how you think we should approach delivering this dream. If you have an idea you’re ready to talk about, get in touch on this form.

Civil-powered

We’re also proud to announce that our Splice website will run on the Civil protocol. This “fingerprints” our content to both the individual author and the newsroom itself, providing authentication and eventual licensing opportunities.

Splice will also plug into the growing Civil ecosystem, allowing new network opportunities such as content sharing, collaborations, and audience discovery.

Are you as excited as we are? We’d love to hear from you. And if you want to find out more about what Civil Media is doing, read this backgrounder or join their Telegram group.

In the meantime, check out the write ups about Splice 100 in Nieman Lab, TechCrunch, and Mumbrella.

— Alan Soon & Rishad Patel