Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Reporting the Interchain

ABOUT COSMOS NEWS

Cosmos News is founded by Justin Werner, who runs a successful news website named Lincoln City Homepage that covers the small rural coastal town of Lincoln City, Oregon.

Werner decided to cover the Cosmos ecosystem seeing similarities between the two communities –both with a real need for media coverage.

JUSTIN WERNER COSMOS NEWS
Cosmos News Publisher Justin Werner

The reason for Lincoln City Homepage’s success is doing the news fairly, sticking to the facts and being accurate. Not taking sides or slanting articles to fit an agenda caused a grassroots movement where the public started sending tips and comments to Werner so he could do his job and gather the news. After some big investigative reports were suddenly available to the public, readers came in droves, inundating the server and requiring Werner to get dedicated hardware that was up to the task of handling 1,000 users per minute. More stories came out and Lincoln City Homepage solidified it’s media dominance, which remains to this day.

Becoming the biggest news source in a tiny tourist town and slowly killing the newspaper of record for the last 80 years did not come without its problems. The City of Lincoln City tried to thwart Werner at every turn, including attempting to say he was not media. This prompted an Oregon Ethics Investigation that ultimately ended in Werner being recognized as media and allowed to attend Executive Session meetings.

Reporter threatened with arrest for attending council meeting

It was a big win for independent media and proved Werner was not afraid to be tip of the spear for freedom of the press.

Everything Werner has learned publishing regular news in an unbiased way is being deployed on Cosmos News with a big catch. He wants to decentralize ownership to the Internet of Blockchains.

“I’m super excited to be doing this,” Werner said. “Keeping people informed is the best defense against tyranny and corruption. My job is to make sure we are ethical, accurate and timely in getting information to those who need it because it affects their lives.”

Moving forward, Cosmos News wants to build a website that covers the Cosmos ecosystem with accurate, fair and balanced reporting. Having it run by owners of the NEWS token is a double-edged sword in that control of what is published could fall into the hands of “those who would see harm done to Cosmos.” Werner has done research on locking up 51% of the tokens and other security measures designed to keep the integrity of Cosmos News in good standing, but has made the ultimate decision to airdrop the vast majority of tokens to longtime stakers in an effort to put media control in the community’s hands. More details on the Cosmos News token will be shared soon.

“The DAO has been created, tokens have been minted, and all that is left is to airdrop the token to the digital citizens of the Cosmos,” Werner said. “My hope is to bring the best news service to the Cosmos and have the community choose what we cover, who we hire, and what gets built into the website. If governance decides to fire Justin Werner, well, then it is what it is and I can say the project was a success.”