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The mainstream media doesn’t understand how to cover crypto

Former Bloomberg News reporter Matthew Leising, who is co-founder of DeCential Media, writes for CoinDesk about how the mainstream media doesn’t understand how to cover cryptocurrencies.

Leising writes, “I wish I’d kept track of the number of editors and other reporters I’ve given the crypto 101 speech to, and there are many in that newsroom and others all over the world who still think it’s a scam. It’s hard to know how to separate the daily news mentality from this certain kind of disdain, I think, as the news needs to be fed every day and never stops. It needs new stories, new sagas, and the rise and fall of Bitcoin fits that schema perfectly. Financial markets know all about froth and bubbles and internet companies with negative revenue and hundred-million-dollar valuations. And they know about the inevitable crash.

“Going through the crypto winter of 2018-2019 as a reporter was one of the most valuable experiences I could’ve wanted. The euphoria of $20,000 bitcoin and ether at $1,400 led to some reckless behavior across the board, and newsrooms were no exception. Again, I understand this part. What I discovered that eventually disappointed me was how few in the media took that downturn to learn about this new way of organizing and transacting.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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