As a planet and people we are hyper connected to the headlines. The United States alone has more than 3,000 news outlets. Worldwide, more than 18,000 newspapers are spread out across 100+ countries and every continent, including Antarctica. That doesn’t even include the zillions of video channels that are out there, along with social media scrolls, podcasts, and other forms of news and information that are literally at our fingertips 24 hours a day.

But trying to make sense of it all is another thing. Turn on the news, go online or, if you’re still into old school, pick up a print copy of a newspaper - what do you see? Headlines that tell you what to think before you get to the first line of the story. News shows that openly bleed into opinion. Tweets and other social nonsense being treated as actual news, while actual news gets overlooked or skipped altogether, especially if it runs counter to groupthink or newsroom “narratives.“ Context is often treated as an afterthought - if it’s thought about at all.

And editorial normalization of the abnormal continues. Lately, some 2.0 newsrooms have been promoting the idea of doing away with “bothsidesism,“ referring to the time honored practice of reporting both sides of a story - not just the side the reporter happens to agree with. It’s no wonder 54% of Americans think reporters are misrepresenting facts. Nearly a third (28%) think reporters are making up facts entirely, according to Gallup.

The public deserves better. And that’s why we created TruthDAO, the world’s first DeFi and blockchain-backed Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) dedicated to journalism that is fair, balanced, impartial and wholly nonpartisan. Our mission: to create a community and global construct that openly encourages people to discuss, evoke, provoke, inspire, create, eradicate and, ultimately, bend the trajectory of media in the emerging metaverse. Readers are clearly in on the joke that has become 2.0 media. TruthDAO presents a rare opportunity to do something about it.

What does this mean in practice?

Guerilla journalism - the web3 version. That’s what we’re talking about. You own the platform. You define and drive the global conversation around the state of journalism today: what’s going right, what’s going wrong, what’s being missed altogether. Got a hot story idea that 2.0 press is ignoring or mangling? Talk about it. Know somebody who can shed light on, say, Biden’s White House, Russia’s assault on Ukraine, the origins of COVID-19 or the latest crypto scam? Or pick a hot-button topic that matters to you and the world - TruthDAO is your forum.

Benefits vary by level - we’ll initially have three, Citizen, Ambassador & Founder - but everybody is an owner and everybody has a say. This is about community, not clicks.

All members will have access to exclusive content generated by our editorial team. Kathy Chu, an award-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, will be covering the full sweep of CryptoWorld - the players, posers, regulatory challenges and all the rest. Other correspondents will cover general news. We’ll have more to say about our editorial plans in the coming weeks.