Bitcoin News Flops - It's Always About the Price

With the price of Bitcoin reaching over $10,000, there are more boring surface level stories in mainstream media on Bitcoin price than ever before, and unfortunately, these stories have also taken over the ‘Trending’ section of Steemit.

Such basic and repeated mainstream reporting of ‘Bitcoin is over $10,000/$11,000’ does nothing to progress discussion on cryptocurrency and hinders broader understanding and take up of crypto.

Bitcoin news articles about price are everywhere online. Image Source.

Today, I felt particularly led on by one mainstream article featured on 4 December 2017 in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. It was a leading story and the writer sounded knowledgeable, but in the end, it was essentially a reworded Bitcoin Wikipedia page with a further ten minutes worth of cryptocurrency Googling, topped off with spelling mistakes.

I mean, are we really still at the stage in mainstream media where writers, and their editorial staff, spell Ethereum as Etherium? I’m surprised they were able to find anything in their Googling with search terms like that!

And when did cryptocurrency need a hyphen to be crypto-currency? I'm still unsure why ‘inverted commas’ are needed when talking about 'crypto-currency'. I guess they were trying to show that the word 'currency' is in the word cryptocurrency? I'm not sure.

Yet despite these errors to anyone with a cursory knowledge of cryptocurrency, it was read by thousands of people. It was a leading story online and had a half page with pictures published in the Newspaper. It seriously bothered me flicking through this 'crypto-currency news on Etherium' while having my morning coffee. Really - is this the best there is?

It is obvious mainstream media relies on existing online content to report on cryptocurrency. The Googling mindset in reporting can pretty quickly be exposed as a quick copy-paste-google-wikipedia-job when basic errors and spelling mistakes make their way through the writer and editor.

In complete fairness though, this is one of the better mainstream articles out there. At least it included some interesting commentary on traditional banking structures vs decentralisation, included a snapshot on the history of Bitcoin and invited the reader to consider issues around broader adoption.

There are some much worse mainstream articles out there that focus entirely on Bitcoin price. I’ll give a special mention to CNBC, who last week reported in the morning that Bitcoin was over $10,000, then reported in that same afternoon that Bitcoin was over $11,000, as two separate articles. Everything was about price – no real thought or insight. Just reporting instead of journalism.

What Now? What is the Solution?

So we are stuck in a reporting cycle of ‘look at Bitcoin's price, it's so high!’, instead of really talking about why people should care about cryptocurrency.

While mainstream media should be lifting its coverage and checking the spelling of Ethereum before printing Newspapers, I think the broader cryptocurrency community - including Steemit whales - have a lot to answer for.

I mean, why the hell are 200 word blogs with titles similar to ‘Bitcoin hits all ATH! Yay!’ getting upvoted and making the top articles every day? I joined Steemit to learn about cryptocurrency and other subjects from all kinds of people. So far, I've had to trawl through the ‘New’ section in cryptocurrency to hopefully find some gold amongst the clickbait. But hey, at least the photography and travel sections are pretty good.

So if you really think about what you write in your blog on cryptocurrency, or any other topic for that matter, let me know and I’ll happily take a look at your articles. We should try and get as much interesting and original work upvoted on different coins and concepts in the Hot and Trending sections as possible.

Maybe that way, when reporters Google 'Bitcoin' for their next filler story, they won’t get stuck with fifty Steemit articles about Bitcoin’s price.