The Associated Press inks two-part deal with blockchain-based journalism startup Civil

Blockchain-based journalism startup Civil has entered into a two-part agreement with The Associated Press, DigiDay reported

Founded in 2017, Civil aims to power sustainable journalism by employing a decentralized model based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Its mission is to create a network of high-quality, independent and sustainable journalism by introducing a new funding model, moving away from the traditional ad-driven revenue model.

Civil’s First Fleet Newsrooms officially began publishing last month. The newsrooms in the Civil network include Local Journalism (The Colorado Sun, The River, Block Club Chicago), Investigative Journalism (Documented, Sludge), Policy Journalism (The Small Bow, Hmm Daily), and International Journalism (Global Ground, Splice).

One part of the deal will see the AP licensing its content to the newsrooms in the Civil network. The other part will involve the AP and Civil collaborating to develop a blockchain platform to enable Civil newsrooms to track the flow of their content and enforce licensing rights.

With this agreement, Civil will get an access to the AP’s knowledge and expertise in licensing, business practices and product design. The AP would benefit by getting the access to potential new customers through Civil’s network, familiarizing with blockchain technology, as well as Civil tokens that will play a major role in Civil’s mission to promote ethical, high-quality journalism.

Jim Kennedy, SVP of Strategy and Enterprise Development at the AP, said that while finding new customers was its primary interest in Civil, protecting intellectual property was also important.

“When you’re licensing content to a legacy media company, you can pretty well track it. But on the internet, it’s never been easy. When we do contracts with people, we establish their rights to use it, and they’re generally followed. But when it’s published, it’s freely available for people to scrape and cut and paste. It used to be, we just worried about people using it for free. Now there’s this whole element of people using it for fake news and misinformation. This presents an opportunity to have a real track record of who’s allowed to publish content and how it’s being used,” he explained.

Matthew Iles, Civil’s founder and CEO, expects to release a product in three months. Although pricing has not been determined yet, he suggested that there would be a free version available to Civil newsrooms.

Backed by ConsenSys, Civil is going to kick-off CVL token sale on September 18.

[This article is not intended as and does not constitute investment advice.]