Why I joined Civil

BitDepth#1217

A FEW months ago, TechNewsTT, the online reporting expansion of this column, was accepted into the Civil community of independent newsrooms (civil.co).

It wasn’t easy to do, requiring more hoop-jumping than a group of journalists usually demands to hang out, but it was certainly less than, say, the local chamber of commerce might require as proof of eligibility.

In place of proof of significant profitability, an almost unreachable benchmark for independent journalism in 2019, Civil asks its members to engage with an intimidating system of tokens and blockchain interactions, in addition to demonstrating a commitment to producing actual, identifiable journalism.

Once you’ve made it past the requirements for digital gas and Ethereum and demonstrate an understanding of what Civil is up to, your journalism project is open to challenge by the community, any of whom can challenge your application and, in so doing, your claim to be a trusted journalism resource.

That fulfils part of Civil’s mandate to build trust for online journalism, but it has also provided an interesting sideshow as websites created to take advantage of the buzz around cryptocurrency have smelled the tokens in Civil’s charter systems and proven terribly keen to get involved. Most have been unanimously rejected, because the sites don’t even pretend to understand what journalism is.

It’s a start on what Civil hopes to do for journalism, though that roadmap is evolving at a pace that’s faster than traditional media houses have been able to muster, though still slower than the pace of today’s assaults on journalism.

Civil is overseen by a foundation, which is broadly committed to providing grants to support journalism innovation, establishing and demonstrating a commitment to journalism standards and ethics, providing educational programming and building a community among publishers, journalists and their audience.

Both are ambitious goals, and the project is being shaped by media entrepreneurs and working journalists. Those are creators who march to a fundamentally different drum than the marketers and managers, the people we normally hear from when media lamentations begin.

The Civil Foundation is led by Vivian Schiller, a guest speaker on journalism for the TT Unit Trust who spoke both truthfully and positively here about journalism’s future on two occasions (http://ow.ly/v6Bh30pCTWu, http://ow.ly/pObL30pCTXj).

Civil has dispensed some funds to journalism projects, but its two most notable creations so far are the registry, which lists journalism projects that have passed community review, and the newly introduced Boosts, a fundraising mechanism for projects being undertaken by Civil newsrooms.

Boosts hasn’t been wildly successful, and that’s likely because most participating newsrooms are just as broke as those looking for funding. There haven’t been many compelling reasons yet for readers and news consumers to participate in Civil far less support newsgathering ventures in the registry.

What Civil has been addressing, by virtue of its approach, is the rolling collapse of local news. Many of the newsrooms that have joined are quite determinedly local and often ruthlessly specific in their scope and mandate.

Owning the niche and superniche subject matter that’s closest to journalists’ interests will play a significant role in commanding audience in an increasingly fractured news landscape.

Ultimately, all news reporting will be local save for a few supermedia outlets with the budgets to fund bureau outreach and to parachute respondents into newsworthy locations to gather outsider perspective.

What will hasten this reorientation of global newsgathering will be the opposite of what’s happening today, the collapsing of local news coverage and consolidation and compression of news perspective. But that will require the determined hand of journalists, not shills and suits.

Mark Lyndersay is the editor of technewstt.com. An expanded version of this column can be found there