20 mint — A new vision for journalism ?
I don’t believe we need more proofs that crypto has become popular.
Yet, this new project is worth mentioning as well as following.
Mainstream medias are entering the game and it feels great to see them playing by the rules.
20 minutes France is launching the biggest web3 focused magazine ever distributed: 20 mint.
In France, the free daily newspaper is the number 1 printed written media among the 18–30 age range, with 2 million readers weekly. The count climbs to 6.5 million if we consider all age ranges.
The newspaper will contain articles about technical education, web3 VIP interviews, explanations about how the technology impregnates society, projects presentations, good practices and everything crypto related I guess.
When in Rome
20 mint is being built by web3 standards: the project has been financed through the private and public sale of 999 typewriters NFTs, respectively for 0.0888 and 0.0999 ETH — around $290 at the time of minting.
The holders will have access to a private Discord to contribute by voting for content, sharing their point of view and their ideas.
Of course the project is highly ambitious but the team is honest about the complications they expect to find along the way. One of the great things about pioneering projects is that they encounter new issues and create new solutions.
In addition to embracing web3 standards, 20mint has some strong partners to help them understand the web3 culture as well as to deliver quality content.
Capsule Corp Labs, a fully NFT oriented web3 accelerator has accepted to guide 20mint in their adventure.
Other big names like Ledger, Dogami, Stake Dao, Blackpool, metafight and coinhouse stand alongside the project.
Under-promise and over-deliver
The NFT hype is dying, the crypto market is crabbing (trading sideways) and people don’t want to be fooled anymore.
Web3 actors are getting educated and experienced by watching big projects fail, by witnessing or being victim of rug pools, hacks, exploits and other scams — experience that is not accessible to those who aren’t involved in web3.
Projects that sell the moon are losing steam, the culture is starting to mature into solid projects led by solid teams who explain honestly that they want to discover the limits and the possibilities with their audience or community.
20mint adapted: they talk about funding first, then about community and finally about innovation. They consider changing the way we think about how journalism work and hint about the creation of a DAO but without making it the central piece of the plan.
Have a look at their roadmap, they smartly kept the most important aspects for the beginning and the most ambitious one for the end.
Blockchain technology and freedom of press go hand-in-hand. A different and decentralised approach to journalism might have some perks.
Non-web support for a Web3 project
When asked why 20 minutes believes in a paper magazine for the democratisation of the technological revolution of our era, they explain having two reasons:
The first one is that since a paper magazine has a beginning and an end, offering a bottom to the rabbit hole is reassuring and encourages readers to follow through.
The second is that they realised through the years that the gap between crypto natives and those who just don’t seem to care is widening. To palliate that issue, one solution is to put the information right into the hands of those who wouldn’t look for it or that aren’t internet natives either.
Democratisation needs bold moves.
It seems that we’re starting to witness the first projects and attempts to bring disruptive technologies to the masses that aren’t motivated by speculative reasons.
Next steps
Now that the 999 NFT collection has sold out, the goal is to distribute 400,000 printed copies in some of the biggest French cities on June 16th.
Moreover, the team and the community have yet to define the rules of the game.
In an interview with La Revue des Médias, Laurent Bainier, Editor in Chief of 20 minutes France and project leader for 20mint, admits that as journalists they can’t delegate the writing nor the editing of articles.
Nonetheless, gathering the minds of experts and web3 aficionados around the table can’t hurt.
Laurent Bainier mentions how blockchain culture and technology can introduce and help the media industry with authority delegation, a more transparent journalistic approach and the respect of readers personal data.
Every long journey starts with a step, let us see where this one takes us.
As always, time will tell.
