The 4thEst8 just sold the first non-fungible token made from a news story. Anywhere. Full stop. (UPDATE added below 11/19)
As the publisher of the 4thEst8 it’s awkward to write about myself but I feel it is important to explain why this is not about the hype or the headline… this plays into the core values I hope to imbue into this news publication startup that I’m struggling to build.
The problem I’m addressing is complex, but news is increasingly broken. Ask most people and they’ll tell you how even their preferred sources seem to be manipulating them at times, or representing the economic interests of others. Some will wax poetic about an imagined halcyon day of old where “real news” reigned, but that’s a fantasy too. Yellow Journalism is part of the history of my industry, and it was largely the result of technological advancements and economic models that supported shocking news. I contend that we are there again.
It isn’t that reporters can not be objective. Rather, the economic models in this industry support talking heads spewing scary stuff — and cutting street level reporters — because that’s very profitable.
I want to put more reporters on the street. That’s fundamentally expensive. I’m developing some technology to improve news labor costs, but I also need to change the way that news pays for itself. I contend that advertising drives bad behavior in news organizations. The behaviors that are most profitable are often least beneficial to the audience. And news must be directly accountable to the public for the discourse that is required to operate a democracy.
To that end I spent time learning how to make NFT’s. I put up a marketplace on OpenSea yesterday, and one sold today. Those NFT’s are made from news articles I wrote.
I realize that ‘gas’ prices (transactional costs) of the cryptocurrency ETH (Ethereum) are frequently high, so I embedded within each of my initial NFT’s a discount code entitling the buyer to one paid annual subscription of the 4thEst8 at the Advocate level, currently an $80 value. That ‘Easter Egg’ is both an economic incentive and a social incentive to be part of the community I hope to build with this platform.
I love my journalist colleagues, with whom I’ve worked for years, but the industry has lost its way. I may be tilting at windmills, but my goal is to make the news industrial complex irrelevant by building a new model that uses technology to be more accountable to readers.
~Paul Riat, publisher
4thEst8
Links:
OpenSea CEO says era of ‘pure collectible NFTs’ is over
On the 4thEst8:
4thEst8 struggles with page load time
UPDATED Following the publishing of this story the 4thEst8 was informed of a handful of news stories that have been made into NFT’s (examples, below), or that other news orgs like the New York Times have indicated their intention to do so (see pic). We regret our error. But we contend that these examples all appear to be that of the novelty variety (when done by a reporter with one story) or a non-journalist enshrining someone else’s content into an NFT. The 4thEst8 still appears to be the first news organization to bake in the crypto/NFT economy into it’s business model.
Why did someone pay $560,000 for a picture of my column? (NYT columnist)
New York Times OpenSea account : No NFT’s yet
