What Could Blockchain Do for Journalism?

For an industry under siege, a potential solution to account for “billionaire” shutdowns and funding challenges

David Moore is having fun. The former director of the Participatory Politics Foundation, a nonprofit open-government group that operated OpenCongress.org — a site that tracked the revolving door between Congress and lobbying and became a leading resource for government transparency — is now part of a project with an ambitious goal: finding a way to save journalism.

Journalism is an industry under siege. There are, in fact, two simultaneous existential crises facing journalism: dwindling public confidence and support for media in the face of the rise in fake news and clickbait, and collapsing advertising models that supported journalism in the past. It is a pincer movement that has balkanized audiences and gutted funding.

In November 2017, two New York–based sites specializing in local reportage, Gothamist (which also had outlets in other cities) and DNAinfo, were abruptly shut down by their owner, Joe Ricketts, a Trump-supporting billionaire, after their staff voted to unionize.

Just weeks later, The Awl and The Hairpin, an esoteric pair of sites beloved as showcases for young writers, announced they were shuttering…