Decentralized journalism marketplace Civil has announced today, a $5 million in funding from blockchain development firm ConsenSys.
ConsenSys is committing $2.5 million in the capital and $2.5 million in services in support of Civil’s newsmaking platform that enables a direct relationship between journalists and readers.
According to Civil founder Matthew Iles, the platform aims to create a "self-sustaining" marketplace for journalism that is "free from advertising, fake news, and outside influence."
By providing the economic incentives and governance structures for newsmakers — writers, editors, photographers, fact-checkers — to self-organize, Civil offers a new business model for journalism,
said Civil founder Matthew Iles.
Our goal is to create a self-sustaining global marketplace for journalism that is free from advertising, fake news, and outside influence.
The project is planned as a self-governing marketplace in which users can directly sponsor newsrooms, while journalists can team up to run their publications. Also aiming to protect journalists against censorship and intellectual property disputes, Civil plans to initially focus on local news and policy and investigative reporting.
Civil’s newsmaking platform and its CVL token sale will launch simultaneously in early 2018 with live newsrooms including Popular, an alternative news and culture publication.
Journalist, editor, and entrepreneur Maria Bustillos, whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Awl, Harper’s, the Guardian and The New York Times, will manage the Popular newsroom, joined by Sasha Frere-Jones, Ryan Bradley, Aaron Bady and other well-known journalists.