Although, blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrencies and more recently, after the rise of NFTs (Non- Fungible Tokens) with ARTs and Games, the technology has the potential to offer a multipurpose solution to almost all the existing industries ranging from finance, supply chain, advertisement, and media. While it is easier to visualize the use cases of blockchain in finance with the boom in DeFi, DeXs, Bitcoin ETFs, etc. most people miss the perspective when it comes to media. Nalnda has been working on developing this perspective and making the use cases of blockchain in media more than just a theory or a case study.
While Nalnda is determined to change the publishing industry by revolutionizing the eBook market and C2C business model, it also wants to change the way news media gather information and presents it to the readers by addressing the most important aspect of news — quality and verified content.
Scenario: What news the readers want and what they get — demand vs supply gap
People crave for news; people crave for news that are close to them, the local news; and people crave for quality content in local news.
While top news agencies focus on news that could reach a broader audience (increasing the ROI), the local communities i.e., district level and city level must rely on local news agencies for the local news that is often deprived of quality. Everyone would love to read the news coming from Times Group and everyone would be happy to pay for the local news coming from Times Group rather than some XYZ news agency.
In most countries, local newspapers and their websites remain the top source of news about a particular town or region, reaching four in ten (44%) weekly. Facebook and other social media groups are used on average by around a third (31%) for local news and information, putting further pressure on News agencies and their business models. As per Reuters Institute’s India Digital Report published in 2019, Facebook and WhatsApp are particularly widely used, with 75% of respondents using Facebook (and 52% saying they get news there), and 82% using WhatsApp (with 52% getting news there). Other social media widely used for news include Instagram (26%), Twitter (18%), and Facebook Messenger (16%). The use of social media is increasing because it provides large number of local news. However, 57% of respondents are worried whether online news they come across is real or fake, and when asked about different kinds of potential disinformation, many of our respondent’s express concern over poor journalism (51%) as well as false news (50%).
Problem Statement: While demand for local news is growing, top news agencies don’t have bandwidth to cater to this segment.
While readers want local news, top news agencies usually don’t know how to get local news round the clock every day throughout the years. There are 748 districts and more than 8000 towns. To get the local news from at least major districts and towns would require a massive field force for any agency. And that’s why most of the top agencies do tie-ups with local bodies or cover only that news that has the potential to create ripple at a regional level at least. This saves lots of costs and increases ROI of each news covered for the News agencies.
Solution: Incentive based model for independent news reporters to gather news locally and share it with News agencies for publishing it on their website
Business Model
The proposed business model consisted of decentralized news marketplace where local reports can write an article or news and top News agencies bid on the articles for publishing it on their own website.
Local news reporters — will scout for news that they will publish on news marketplace. These news reporters would be an independent reporter who have freedom to sell the news to the highest bidder. Depending upon the content quality the new agencies will pay the reporters. More number of reporters covering the same news will verify the content. Sharing pics and videos will increase the content quality and will fetch more price for the reporters.
News marketplace — New marketplace will be a decentralized data marketplace. Local news reporters will get paid for sharing contents and news agencies will have to pay to get the content
News agencies’ website — Now that news agencies will have access to local news in abundance, the content on the news website could be catalogued based on local districts and towns. The news can also be targeted to readers based on their IPs just like Facebook and Google targets the search results.
Use case — Decentralized news marketplace can have multiple uses cases.
a) Verification on data in future — The data gathered from all local reports can be archived and cross referenced in future for authenticity of who said what?
b) Surveys — All data gathered from 1000s of local points can be used to generate trends, conduct surveys, arrive at sentiments at larger level.
c) News/Campaign Coverage Index — The data set could also be used by News agencies to refine their News Coverage Index and Campaign Coverage Index
d) IP based targeted advertisements by News agencies
Nalnda is decentralized marketplace for readable contents. Visit www.nalnda.com for more information. #ContentsAreAssets
