Exploring Steem and the Future of Journalism with CUNY's Entrepreneurial Fellows

Reporting back from CUNY

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Yesterday, we had the opportunity to present our incubator - Hive account@sndbox - to the current group of fellows at the CUNY Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. The Education Director had invited us to present on Steemit, Sndbox, and the opportunities for journalists in the current ecosystem of blockchain. It was a tremendously engaging conversation that spanned a lot of contemporary topics. Many of these entrepreneurs were keen to learn more about how the Steem blockchain could provide a sustainable infrastructure for publishing work and building an audience. In this post, we’ll look at some of the main points that were brought up to bring the discussion home.

But first, big thanks to Orlando and Luke, hosts of Life on the Blockchain, a podcast born out of the program. We had a blast recording in the CUNY studios, going over how Steemit works, why we founded Sndbox, and why every content creator in the world should be paying attention. Even Chad, the sound engineer for the session, jumped into the conversation with a bunch of questions after the main recording and confessed that he signed up for Steemit during the talk! We’re looking forward to the final broadcast (and the awesome post-recording discussion that was luckily recorded as well) and we’ll be sure to announce it to the Steemit community when it is ready.

• The 2018 fellows of Tow-Knight Center of Entrepreneurial Journalism. Learn more here.

• Hive account@sndbox presenting on how the incubator works (where the money comes from) and showcasing Steemit as a new avenue to empower content creators and reporters.

The group talk was a fantastic experience. We presented to a dozen journalists with a wealth of experience and looking to innovate within their discipline. The Education Director Jeremy Caplan helped guide the discussion and we were able to go through all the main fundamentals of blockchain, the Steemit platform, and how these fellows could engage us in Sndbox. Interestingly enough, they had had a few presentations prior on various other blockchain services and platforms so we were able to build on that momentum.

Big thanks to everyone who was there for the great discussions and we’re looking to organizing another gathering soon!

• A must-watch introductory video to the Tow-Knight Center of Entrepreneurial Journalism. Learn more via their website, here.

Blockchain-Empowered Journalism

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With our presence in New York City, Sndbox is aiming to drive more conversations within specific disciplines around content empowerment. Our primary domain is the creative field of art, design, architecture, curatorial practice - but we understand that there are broader disciplines at play here. With talks and workshops like these we're beginning to cultivate more cross-disciplinary communication. Thinking long term, that kind of cross-pollinating is very exciting.

This was affirmed in the discourse yesterday, we spoke about how the journalism and news industry faces similar obstacles of social media including censorship, verification, value distribution, and much more. News corporations have evidently struggled in the internet age to keep journalistic integrity intact and focused. The blurred lines between actual news and bloated hearsay are commonplace in this modern climate of journalism.

We’ve actually already seen journalistic aficionados like Hive account@davidpakman integrate their content production well and monetize a new space of practice. We hope this will set the precedent, especially for aspiring journalists with innovative ideas of how to operate within the discipline. Steemit, along with the growing blockchain ecosystem, could very well be one of the more powerful tools needed to achieve this new foundation.

Let us know what you think below!

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