Is New York Times mulling to enter blockchain space?

The interest among media and newspaper giants to tap blockchain potential has been growing in the past couple of months.

The New York Times, the second-largest newspaper in the U.S. by circulation, recently revealed its plan to trial blockchain technology for publishing in a new job posting, CoinDesk reported. However, in an update, CoinDesk said that the NYT has taken down the job posting after its article was published.

The job description for the position of Lead, Blockchain Exploration, stated:

“The New York Times is looking for a forward-looking leader who will help envision and design a blockchain-based proof of concept for news publishers. The position is within the company’s research & development division.”

While it remains uncertain at the moment as to why the job posting was taken down, it marks a growing trend among traditional newspaper industry players to enter the blockchain space.

In October 2018, Nasdaq was awarded a patent for using blockchain technology for news dissemination system. The patent describes an “information computer system” that will securely release “time-sensitive information to recipients via a blockchain.”

In January 2019, Google, the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, ConsenSys, and others backed Automattic’s new publishing project “Newspack by WordPress.com”. In the same month, NEM Foundation in Argentina signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with CISPREN, a local trade union of journalists, to develop a blockchain solution for copyright protection.

More recently, Civil launched its community-run journalism network. The startup, which counts Forbes and The Associated Press among its partners, failed to hit the target in its token sale last year. In order to facilitate a new model of journalism, it has now launched a new kind of token sale – with no hard caps, soft caps or time limits.

Meanwhile, PUBLISH, Inc., a blockchain media software company based in South Korea, has already started providing blockchain-based content management system (CMS) to publishers. Its initiatives include:

• PUBLISHprotocol – an open source blockchain media protocol.
• PUBLISHalliance – a consortium of media enterprises, technology providers, and academic institutions tasked with the development and proliferation of PUBLISHprotocol. Members include Investing.com, Inews24, and NetEase News Korea, among others.
• PUBLISHsoft – a proprietary end-to-end publishing system enabling publishers to issue their own PUBLISHprotocol-based cryptographic token.