Journalism’s Funding Model is Broken; Here’s How We Propose Fixing It

At Civil, we’re incredibly passionate about promoting a new model for journalism. If you feel the same way, be sure to sign up for our weekly newsletter. It’s where we introduce Newsrooms that have joined the Civil platform, and offer analysis on journalism news.

We feel strongly that the current, ad-driven model is not sustainable, and we’ve spoken at length about how blockchain technology can help introduce a new, ad-free model.

In this post, we want to address a more fundamental question as it relates to our mission: why?

Why is the journalism industry in such a dire state, and how do we propose to help introduce a new solution?

The Problem

The journalism industry is in crisis. “Good journalism” and “making money” are no longer synonymous. Publishers, confronted with the harsh business realities of the digital age, cannot rely on ad revenue to sustain them as it did during print journalism’s reign.

Today, just five corporations control more than 90 percent of American media outlets — a phenomenon that’s similarly playing out around the world. That the vast majority of media outlets are controlled by a microscopic concentration of elites and their respective interests is beyond alarming. Journalism is increasingly becoming more of a profit vehicle than a pillar of democracy. 
 
 Public trust in media is, unsurprisingly, at an all time low. This toxic media environment comes at a time when we as a society are more divided than ever before. A growing number of journalism outlets have mirrored this trend. Instead of being an objective voice that rallies us around the facts, many are opting to pander to polar extremes at either end of the political spectrum with sensationalist headlines designed to maximize page views, credibility be damned. 
 
This model is the antithesis of good journalism, but it works. People like echo chambers; they’re generally more interested in finding stories that confirm existing beliefs than seeking out alternative perspectives (a problem that social media is making worse). It’s an extremely dangerous precedent for an industry intended to be civil society’s bulwark against governmental overreach and corruption; it marks a threat to not only journalism, but democracy itself. 
 
 This has to change.

By and large, journalism runs on a dated, broken business model that relies largely on ad revenue. Hard-hitting investigative stories that expose mass corruption, which can take months to report, simply don’t pay the bills as they once did. Few publications can afford to produce such content anymore, and the number of those that can is constantly dwindling. And so we find ourselves mired in a digital media environment focused more on Kardashians and best burger listicles than hard-hitting journalism.

Our Solution

Civil aims to turn this broken model on its head. We’re doing so by taking advertisers out of the equation and introducing a new operating model for journalism that makes newsmakers accountable to their readership alone — not advertisers, not publishers, not billionaire owners; just readers. Civil is not a publication itself, but a platform on which newsmakers can found and run their own, independent newsrooms, which in turn collectively benefit from the larger community’s growth and interconnectivity. Put another way, Civil is the canvas on which journalists can paint the future of their industry. 
 
 To do so, we’re focused on four core pillars:

Attract great journalists

• Great journalism starts with great journalists, and there’s an abundant supply of incredibly talented reporters currently seeking jobs. We want to be a platform that enables a new, more effective operating model — and then get out of the way as they build their own communities and report on stories most relevant to their individual newsroom communities.
• To make this model work, we must think like journalists; we need to appreciate and anticipate their greatest needs. With that in mind, we’ve hired and partnered with journalists (or “Newsmakers,” as they’re known on Civil) from the likes of Politico, DNAinfo and BBC to oversee Civil’s newsroom operations. It’s this team, who have spent the majority of their careers in newsrooms, that’s responsible for providing services and support to Newsmakers as they found and grow newsrooms on Civil’s platform. We’re committed to giving Newsmakers the resources they need to get initial newsrooms up and running, so we’ve allocated U.S. $1 million to support a “First Fleet.” Our approach is working: we’ve already signed on more than a dozen journalists with pedigrees from publications including The New Yorker, LA Times and TIME Magazine.

Use tech to give journalists control of the funding model

• When Civil launches, anybody will be able to apply to launch a Newsroom on Civil. To do so, they’ll need to demonstrate an ethical, journalistic mission, share their roster of collaborators and share a viable, sustainable business model. The community will vote, via CVL tokens (the platform’s self-governance mechanism), and if a prospective Newsroom is accepted, it will gain publishing rights on Civil. If/when approved by the community, Newsrooms will retain full business and editorial autonomy. Civil will never meddle in a Newsroom’s business model; it will be up to them to determine which model is best for their base (e.g., subscription models, metered paywalls, 100% paywalls, 100% un-gated content, “always-on” pledge drives, etc.).
• It’s the token element that enables Civil to eliminate the middlemen — third-party publishers, advertisers — from the equation while maintaining a reliable, secure model. All token transactions (e.g., applying to launch a newsroom, challenging a newsroom for being unethical, voting on an outstanding challenge) are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is essentially a gigantic network of independent computers, which all have access to a master ledger that permanently records these token transactions. As new transactions occur — becoming a member of a newsroom, microtipping an article, posting a new story — this digital ledger is simultaneously updated across each node, or computer.
• This means that information is stored by the public, not concentrated on a single server controlled by Amazon, Facebook or Google, and thus nearly impossible to alter without achieving the consensus of millions of independent users worldwide.

Build an impassioned community

• We’re a marketplace for journalism: writing it, reading it, reacting to it and supporting it. As Civil’s larger community grows, so too does the reach and value of each individual newsroom. Our initial focus is to serve the three areas of journalism that have been hardest hit by two-plus decades of newspaper closures and mass layoffs: local, investigative and policy. We believe there’s an incredible demand for more coverage in each of these fields, and we want to be the destination for those of you that crave better, deeper coverage in these important, vastly underserved fields.
• We’re in this together; Civil will go as far as its community, which is why readers, or “Citizens,” will have the option to purchase tiered memberships, in individual newsrooms. We want to give Citizens a voice in journalism again, and to foster a more direct connection between Citizen and Newsmaker. Similarly, we want to provide better mechanisms for newsmakers to inspire credibility so that their readers are confident the news they’re reading is based on verifiable facts. We believe that this is the best course to help restore the public’s trust in journalism, while also enabling more journalists to focus on writing truly impactful stories.

Grant full editorial autonomy to newsrooms; don’t meddle

• If we’ve learned anything from the current, dire state of the journalism industry, it’s that editorial autonomy is key for newsrooms to grow and thrive. It’s also an exceptionally rare commodity. A newsroom’s top priority should be serving its stated mission, not the bottom line-driven interests of advertisers and publishers. Newsmakers should focus on reporting important stories without having to constantly justify user engagement metrics to skeptical advertisers. We want no part of that model and believe strongly in letting individual newsrooms govern themselves: we offer the needed tools to build a profitable newsroom, it’s up to the newsmakers to determine their business strategy and their editorial focus will be.
• Civil will provide basic ethics guidelines to ensure that no newsroom becomes a bastion of hate speech or trolling, and we will always provide services and support on the technical and operational sides. It’s definitely a novel concept compared to the traditional journalism operating model — and that’s precisely what’s enabling us to attract some of the most talented journalists on the market.

Journalism is at a crossroads like never before. We’re passionate about introducing a new solution that will open the floodgates for quality reporting and make it more accessible for all parties.

Let’s begin!