Why I’m Building a Media DAO to Support Objective, Fact-Based, and Nuanced Journalism

The New York Times was established in 1851 as a penny paper that would avoid sensationalism and report the news in a restrained and objective fashion.

But today, media incentives are broken.

We Are All Media Outlets

The proliferation of digital media, with its low barriers to entry for all, has turned us all into media publications and has saturated the media landscape.

Each day:

• 7.5 million blog posts are published
• 95 million photos are shared on Instagram
• 140 million tweets are shared
• 432,000 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube
• 100 billion messages are sent via WhatsApp.

An article with 50,000 views generates about US$200 in Google AdSense revenue but the average American journalist earns just $53,000 a year.

It has become incredibly difficult and expensive for most news media outlets to capture attention in a profitable way, leading to decimation in revenues, market share, and competitiveness.

It has become almost impossible to justify investing in objective investigative journalism — because who has…