The evolution of crypto journalism

Since its introduction, cryptocurrency has undergone financial, technological and ideological shifts. To discuss these changing trends, Finance Magnates interviewed Ron Friedman, editor in chief at cryptocurrency news media platform BlockTV.

The conversation revolved around the evolution of BlockTV as a journalistic entity in the cryptocurrency space.

When asked to comment on the idea of BlockTV as a cryptocurrency platform, Freidman said, “The idea for BlockTV came about right at the peak of late 2017–the ‘bubble’ or the ‘boom; fond memories of ‘crypto summer’, I guess. But it took us about half a year to get the operation started before we started publishing news.”

“We were reported on daily price decreases. It wasn’t the best time for the crypto industry,” he continued. “And it wasn’t meeting any of the expectations–we came in thinking it was one industry, and it was transforming before our eyes as we were getting started.”

“It was a bit of a shocker,” he added. “The whole culture changed around [crypto], and obviously the businesses that were doing extremely well and had a lot of advertising budget and a lot of public relations (PR) budget–businesses that were hiring and working on new projects, some of them more successful than others–that all changed.”

When asked if and how the vision of Block TV has changed; “We saw that there was a vacuum,” he said. “There are–and there were even more so, back then–a lot of publications doing crypto news. There are the big players–CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph…we saw that there was an interest, but that nobody was doing television [or] broadcast treatment of [the industry].”

Our mantra was always ‘show the faces’,” he continued. “We’re talking with the community and for the community. It’s different to read a quote in a web story or hearing it in a podcast than if you actually see it in an interview with the people behind the headlines.”

“Like the industry itself, everybody’s matured,” he said. “Everybody knows to take things with more good, healthy journalistic skepticism, and aren’t as quick to add adjectives to products and projects that are being reported about.”

Friedman has a masters degree in journalism from the University of British Columbia and also has a background in journalism.

The full interview can be viewed here.