Civil’s blockchain-driven monetization model

by Anisa Holmes, City University graduate student

“Journalism is facing a crisis of trust,” Christine Mohan, Co-founder of Civil, says, but blockchain technology might just be a solution to journalism’s problems. Civil is a blockchain-powered journalism platform operating in 15 newsrooms today and 100 newsrooms by January. By the end of next year, Civil leaders hope to be in 1,000 newsrooms worldwide.

So, what exactly is Civil’s technology, and how does it work? Civil is a decentralized network of ethical newsrooms, focusing on the four most underserved areas in journalism: local, international, policy and investigative journalism. They use blockchain to “remove the middleman and put the content creator and the content consumer back in touch”. The key value of using blockchain lies in its indelibility. “It’s an immutable ledger. Once you publish a hash of the article to the blockchain you can’t remove it,” Mohan explains. This means there are huge implications when it comes to averting censorship; Civil includes censorship resistance tools including fingerprints, tamper-proof trails, verifiable authorship, and consistent pseudonymity.

Besides Civil’s anti-censorship applications, it offers journalists a verified badge and reputation management system, the ability to receive direct tips in the form of Civil tokens from readers and supporters, as well as a stake and voting rights in Civil itself. Already 500+ journalists from around the world are on board. Civil is also working on several bespoke integrations for other major publishers including the Associated Press and Forbes.

In the future, Civil hopes to simplify its buying process and better educate potential buyers about how purchasing Civil tokens works. Blockchain is still a young technology, but Mohan believes that while “there are a lot of hurdles, there is also a lot of opportunity.”