Things have been rocky at the Denver Post lately.
The Colorado news outlet is in full revolt mode after frustrated journalists publicly blasted the newspaper’s hedge fund owner. In April, the 125-year-old newspaper published an editorial calling executives at Alden Global Capital “vulture capitalists.”
Now, former Denver Post reporters and editors plan to launch a new local media outlet on, you guess it, the blockchain. The new venture, the Colorado Sun, will be launched in partnership with the Civil Media Company, a New York-based startup that aims to use blockchain technology to launch 1,000 publications nationwide by the end of the year.
The Colorado Sun intends to be “a community-supported, journalist-owned team focused on investigative, explanatory and narrative journalism for a state in the midst of a massive evolution.” It will be completely free of advertisements, according to its website.
So how will it work exactly?
The new publication will have a conventional website whose data will be written permanently into the secure, distributed digital ledger known as the blockchain. Civil Media will offer a grant to the the Colorado Sun, so it can cover its expenses. Note that Civil is backed by Consensys, a Brooklyn-based blockchain software company.
It appears that the media outlet is also raising money through crowdfunding site Kickstarter. So far, it has raised $31,317 of its $75,000 goal. Its Kickstarter page reads, “Local news is in crisis. In an era when hedge funds and billionaires are too often calling the shots, there is a new opportunity for people to help keep fact-based local news coverage alive.”
Here’s another interesting facet: As part of its plan to fund new media entities like the Colorado Sun, Civil Media plans to unveil a new token this summer called CVL. The token will hold publications in the system to a certain set of ethical and professional standards. Anyone who buys the token will be able to vote on whether one of its media sites violates the company’s journalism standards.