Blockchain Start-Up Civil to Track, Distribute Associated Press Content

The Civil Media Company, a blockchain journalism project, said on Medium on Tuesday it has struck a deal with The Associated Press (AP) to help the news agency fight plagiarism, as well as distribute AP content to Civil-based newsrooms.

As per the new arrangement, US-based start up will use its licensing tool to help AP closely examine where its content flows and thus prevent misuse of the materials. At the same time, AP will license the newsrooms in the Civil network, 14 as of now, to use its national and foreign news content.

The newswire will, in addition, own Civil’s CVL tokens, with the help of which, for example, journalists will be able to set up independent newsrooms. What is more, one can stake CVL to challenge an existing newsroom that violates journalistic standards.

Civic, whose sole investor is blockchain IT firm ConsenSys, is scheduled to launch a token sale for CVL on September 18.

“AP has been pushing into new digital territory for more than two decades, and Civil is opening up another new space with interesting technology to explore and a commitment to good journalism,” AP senior vice president for strategy and enterprise development Jim Kennedy commented.

As one of its major goals, Civil strives to upturn the traditional ad-based revenue model driving journalism and grant journalists ownership of the content they produce, founder and CEO Matthew Iles told online publication TechCrunch on Wednesday.

“We have a problem now of not even just dealing with literal fake news, but dealing with the social aspects of people not really knowing what to trust anymore because people are throwing around allegations,” according to Iles.

Aside from AP, participants in the Civic network include the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the European Journalism Centre, and the start-up hinted at new partnerships coming up in the recent weeks.