
Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/business/media/denver-post-blockchain-colorado-sun.html
======
JumpCrisscross
> _People who purchase the CVL token, a form of cryptocurrency, will have a
> say concerning the projects hosted by Civil — meaning that they can vote on
> whether one of its websites violates the company’s journalism standards,
> which are outlined in the Civil Constitution_

This features the worst elements of public ( _e.g._ the _BBC_ ), private (
_e.g._ the _Wall Street Journal_ ) and patronage ( _e.g._ the _Washington
Post_ ) media.

Letting token owners “vote on whether...websites violate the company’s
journalism standards” explicitly removes editorial independence. Worse, it
ties editorial control to tokens/votes which are bought with money. Worse
still, since ownership is pseudonymous, there is no way to detect someone (
_e.g._ a wealthy individual, company or foreign government) amassing control
across disparate wallets. Pseudonymity also makes shaming owners for bad
behaviour difficult or impossible.

~~~
pudo
Can't emphasise this enough. Any system that lets (rich) people vote on what
the truth is cannot be called journalism. It is simply not how facts work.
This is also why Elon Musks recent initiative ("Pravduh"?) has all the
populist appeal in the world, yet contains the risk to do serious damage to
journalistic independence.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
And who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US?_

Point being we can answer this question. If you put ownership on the
blockchain, we can’t. It’s exactly what we have today, but worse.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
This is shifting the goal posts. The point is we have a media that's already
well under the thumb of 'rich people', to use the phrase of the person I
originally responded to. And so comparing any idea to an ideal of an
independent media free of this control is rather disingenuous.

For your shift, is anonymizing control in exchange for a clear ledger of
control a bad deal? I'm not sure. Seems like an interesting idea at least, and
given the current state of our media I'm more than happy to see any idea
trying to change the game.

~~~
unclebucknasty
You have a good point, but that doesn't make this proposal any more viable.

> _given the current state of our media I 'm more than happy to see any idea
> trying to change the game._

Sounds like an intuitive statement until you really think about it for a
second. Then, you realize that it's a reckless and possibly dangerous approach
to problem-solving.

If you start down the solution path by asking the question "how could things
get any worse?", then it's very likely that you'll find out.

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wycs
Like Steemit, this cannot incentivize production long term unless it has more
efficient means of monetization, which it doesn’t. Steem subsidizes content
through inflation of a token during a speculative mania. To put it mildly,
this is not sustainable. Though the founders did astonishingly well on their
exit.

Putting a newspaper on a blockchain, to the extent the idea is even coherent,
does not exempt it from the economics that makes journalism unremunerative.

This is not to say that we cannot use crypto currencies to perform activities
that were traditionally performed by journalists. However, this will look more
like anonymous information bounty markets or prediction markets.

But even prediction markets need someone to subsidize them, willfully taking a
loss to provide liquidity. I think there is a good case to be made for using
demurrage to do this. But for this to work there has to be actual long term
economic value on the blockchain, which most lack.

~~~
okay_nick
Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil.

While our TCR will not solve the economics of journalism on its own, we
believe it will help provide transparency into the inner workings of newsrooms
and increase media literacy in ways that could encourage more people to fund
journalism organizations. Furthermore, we think it can vastly improve
discoverability especially for smaller (but still ethical and reliable) news
organizations.

From there, it's about giving newsrooms tools to run and monetize their
business how they want. For some this might look like traditional newspaper
subscriptions, for others we might see more experimental monetization schemes
that are only feasible on the blockchain (such as bounties).

\-- Nick Reynolds

p.s. - Have you looked into TCRs generally? There's a fair amount of overlap
with prediction markets, you might be interested in learning more about the
incentive system.

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znpy
Now I am no expert on blockchain and business administration but... Since
these CVL tokens could be tradeable, and they grant "a say concerning the
projects hosted by Civil"...

Uhm...

Doesn't this all look like, basically, company shares? Doesn't this mean that
the problem has just been shifted but potentially not solved ?

~~~
danso
Stockholders, especially retail investors, don't typically have privileged
access or ability to give input to a newsroom.

~~~
aitrean
And they shouldn't. News should not be determined by its shareholders. The
idea that such privileges should be able to be purchased is so
incomprehensibly stupid, I'm at a loss for words.

~~~
prolikewhoa
You don't think it already isn't purchased and hasn't been for a very long
time? There are only a handful of media companies, at least in the USA.

~~~
geofft
It's obvious when the _Washington Post_ writes articles about Amazon that
there's a conflict of interest. They definitely write them, but I don't
remember anyone sharing any stories from them about e.g. the HQ2 process.
People know to look elsewhere. And conversely, the moment the _Post_ publishes
a news (not opinion) article about how every city should want to be HQ2, or
worse, mentions it off-hand in an article about something else, everyone knows
not to trust that and possibly to lose trust in the news source in general. So
they don't.

It's not obvious when ownership is a thousand pseudonymous private keys when
there's a conflict of interest. If a random article about a random company
looks a little more negative than it should be, who knows if the current
pseudonymous owners are shorting that company?

Publicly-disclosed ownership of the media by the rich has a ton of
disadvantages, yes. But I don't the blockchain solving any of those
disadvantages, and I see it introducing a new one that is specifically avoided
by publicly-disclosed ownership by the rich.

~~~
prolikewhoa
How many people are actually informed that the Washington Post is owned by
Jeff Bezos? How many people know that Jeff Bezos has contracts with the CIA[1]
& sits on a pentagon board[2]? I doubt many. It's one of the few "left" wing
newspapers I refuse to read for the reasons above.

I'm not arguing for this blockchain solution, I think it makes things worse
exactly as you said.

[1][https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-
details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-
joins-p...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-joins-
pentagon-defense-advisory-board-2016-8)

~~~
freeone3000
Every time the Washington Post mentions Bezos, or a company he owns, even in
the abstract (for instance, in this spaceflight article, which mentions blue
origin:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/15/f...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/15/feature/what-
does-it-mean-to-be-a-nasa-astronaut-in-the-celebrity-space-age-of-elon-musk-
and-richard-branson/?utm_term=.409568fbd10d) ), they say that Jeff Bezos owns
the washington post, in those exact words.

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Moodles
I propose a new rule of the internet, much like the rule of "if you can think
of it, there's porn for it." If you can think of it, there's a alt coin for
it.

It's genuinely difficult. One friend suggested "a coin for space travel".
Nope. Mars coin is a thing. What about a coin for students? Nope. A coin for
Kanye West. Nope. A coin for porn? Nope, of course that already exists.
There's even a coin for keeping track of blockchains.

~~~
a1369209993
A coin for Cymothoa exigua. COBOLCoin. A coin based on MD2 hashing for proof-
of-work.

~~~
bastawhiz
Are you accepting investments?

~~~
a1369209993
...

Not _yet_ , I guess?

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apo
Ridiculous story. When was the last time you heard of a newspaper going under
because its stories weren't "written permanently into the secure digital
ledger known as the blockchain"?

Newspapers are dying because other kinds of companies ate their advertising
revenue.

We can add the Denver Post to a list of old-guard companies desperately
grabbing for blockchain straws on their slide to oblivion (Long Island Iced
Tea, Kodak).

I'm all for innovation in applied cryptography. But these desperate stories of
blockchain cargo-cultism need to stop.

~~~
perl4ever
I believe I've seen claims that classified ads used to support newspapers, and
the internet took that away.

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root_axis
Like in most cases a blockchain is useless here. Why not just used a
centralized system? Nothing is gained from decentralization since the
organization has to be trusted to recognize the voting power of the tokens
either way. Totally pointless.

~~~
okay_nick
Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Once the Registry contract is
deployed on the blockchain, it will continue to function and provide utility
no matter what happens to the "Civil Media Company". No involvement on our
part is needed to "recognize the voting power" as any individual, entity, or
website can use the information contained in the registry however they want. A
social media site, for example, could query the registry and decide to render
a "credibility badge" when displaying links from a news organization that is
whitelisted.

Happy to help clarify if you still have questions.

\-- Nick Reynolds

~~~
root_axis
> _A social media site, for example, could query the registry and decide to
> render a "credibility badge" when displaying links from a news organization
> that is whitelisted._

Yes, the key word is "decide". To use your "credibility badge" example, an
organization could ostensibly behave like they accurately respect the registry
while also surreptitiously ignoring the registry in situations that suit them.
You might say, "well those organizations will develop a reputation for
dishonesty", which might be true _if they get caught_ , but also isn't at all
different from the status quo today where selective reporting and partisan
bias are bemoaned loudly and often by every side regarding every issue.

~~~
okay_nick
Since the registry is public, it would be very easy to write tools like a
browser extension that would handle validating against the registry,
preventing the type of fraud you're talking about. More generally, there's an
interesting project called MetaCert that is doing just that (fraud/phishing
prevention) using their own cryptoeconomic incentive system.

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whatsstolat
Cure middle age balding .... with Blockchain.

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nrclark
What makes this different than a co-op, aside from the "definitely not a scam
guys, honest!" overtones of selling unregulated stock disguised as tokens?
That and hosting everything "on the blockchain" for some inscrutable reason?

And what does hosting news "on the blockchain" even mean in any practical
sense? That I'll have to install a crypto-mining client just to read their
articles? Or that they won't use normal webservers to host their content?

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cabaalis
I often click a bunch of links on here and receive a "Sorry, you've exceeded
the free limit" message. Why can't I dump $5 into an account on NYT and then
be able to click "I want to read this, use my tab." I'm not talking about a
subscription. I'm talking about a "buy 10 reads" which I would absolutely use.
I will not subscribe.

~~~
jacobn
Having run a business (in an unrelated field) that offered both a subscription
and a paygo model, the reason was pretty clear: you lose more from people who
would have subscribed opting for paygo than you gain from people who would
never subscribe but would choose paygo.

The subscriptions are surprisingly valuable. Paygo not so much.

Usual caveats apply: on average, in my experience, YMMV, etc etc.

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diievevsvck
Steemit has been running for some time to demonstrate that a blockchain based
publishing platform is possible. I suspect many more papers will launch
private blockchain based storage, it provides transparent voting and
censorship resistance, both valuable to a publisher.

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mistrial9
There are many good studies from more than ten years ago, about participatory
voting systems. I think many of the knee-jerk cynical posts here are
premature.

~~~
paulgb
I'm curious about these studies, do you have a link?

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iagnionio
This is the _only_ application I've seen for a blockchain that isn't totally
brain-dead. I'm certainly skeptical, but skepticism is better than certainty
it will fail.

I'll be watching it with interest.

~~~
fru2013
While not completely brain-dead, a blockchain still is not necessary to solve
this use case.

~~~
wycs
I think it is fair to say it is completely brain dead.

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Lazare
> They will be partnering with the Civil Media Company, an ambitious New York
> start-up that aims to use griddles and pancake recipes to start 1,000
> publications nationwide by the end of the year.

...actually I think the original quote said something about crypto, not
pancakes, but I don't think it changes the underlying meaning. Why do you need
a distributed, trustless database to run a local paper?

> The new publication will have a conventional website whose data will be
> written permanently into a MySQL database.

Whups, sorry, that actually was meant to say "...into the secure digital
ledger known as the blockchain." Which...okay. 1) I think they mean "a
blockchain", and 2) why do we...care? Is this so people will notice if the
article is edited? Why not just push the content to a public git repo when
it's published? Maybe sign the commits?

> People who purchase the CVL token, a form of cryptocurrency, will have a say
> concerning the projects hosted by Civil — meaning that they can vote on
> whether one of its websites violates the company’s journalism standards

So in other words, it's a lot like...a public company, that owns a newspaper,
that then strips out every hint of editorial control, and then lets its
shareholders directly have a say in every detail of what gets printed? So it's
like...literally an attempt to create a newspaper even worse than the one
they're quitting in order to form this one?

> Matthew Iles, the chief executive of Civil, said that by selling ownership
> stakes to the public, the company seeks to eliminate the possibility of one
> company or a small group of investors exerting power and influence over a
> journalistic organization and compromising its mission — exactly what many
> employees of the Denver Post accused Alden of doing.

By selling ownership, they think they're stopping one rich person from
amassing a major ownership stake, as happened when their last newspaper sold
ownership and allowed one rich person to amass a major ownership stake? What
must it feel like to live with this level of blinding naivety?

The good news, such as it is, is that ownership of the tokens doesn't actually
give anyone control over the newspaper, meaning that this is _actually_ just
meaningless hype. But, by the same logic, there's also no reason to actually
buy the tokens. They have value only to the extent they allow editorial
independence to be violated. So either they'll be valuable (but will undermine
the journalistic ethics of the organisation), or they'll be worthless. There's
no upside here.

It's early Monday morning in this part of the world, and I literally cannot
figure out if this is an overly subtle troll or merely the dumbest idea I've
heard in quite some time. This basically seems to be an attempt to use
inappropriate technologies in order to carefully craft a "solution" that will
make the problem worse. If you're worried about local newspapers being
financially unviable and subject to intrusive editorial control...how does
this do anything but make it worse?

~~~
codebje
> Matthew Iles, the chief executive of Civil, said that by selling crypto
> tokens masquerading as ownership stakes they could raise a large amount of
> capital without setting any expectation of returns.

It's just another coin capital scam. Launch a crypto coin, get suckers to buy
it, go yacht shopping.

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bwb
I am not sure what newspapers should look like now... it doesn't seem like
they can be local and profitable any longer. Hm....

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jordache
another blockchain hype?

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paulie_a
Hahaha, oh wait you are serious, let me laugh harder.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

