Will Steemit ever replace my newspaper?

Hi everyone,
My name is Wim De Preter, I’m a journalist at the Belgian business newspaper De Tijd. As a tech & media reporter for the newspaper, I consider myself to be part of the old mainstream media, yet with a privileged view on all the fascinating stuff that is happening in new media.

As such, Steemit has been an exciting discovery. Exciting enough for me to write an article about it, which will appear in tomorrow’s edition; I will post a link as soon as it’s online. I’m charmed by the philosophy behind this site, the unique combination of a social medium with a new cryptocurrency, which together potentially create a very powerful ecosystem. After all, as every journalist knows, few things are more powerful than a good story to connect people from all sorts of backgrounds. The financial incentive and the fact that you don’t need advertising (although it could be a part of the system) seem to be the perfect answer to some of the flaws of traditional publishing platforms.

However, after my first few hours discovering the platform, I’m still left with a lot of mixed feelings and question marks. The reason that I’ve picked up the story of Steemit is because Reuters first ran a story on it, which mainly focused on the enormous appreciation of the steem currency in these past few days. Now I’m sure that this tells us something about the traction that Steemit is getting on the web, but at the same time I think that the growing hype around the currency is creating enormous financial speculation.  

Simply looking at the amounts of money that some authors are currently making on this platform, and comparing that to the quality of the content and the number of users, tells me that there is a huge mismatch. It’s not normal for anyone to earn thousands of dollars with just one or a handful of stories, as valuable and well written as they may be. Or, put another way, I have a hard time believing that the whole steemit ecosystem can already be worth 265 million USD (current value according to coinmarketcap.com). It’s not impossible, of course, but only if you’re factoring in exponential growth for the coming months or even years.
Now, I’m sure that steem can continue to appreciate for quite a while, but if and when that bubble bursts, it could disappoint a lot of people and actually kill the enthousiasm for this innovative project.

Another concern has to do with the quality of the content that the platform will attract. I know I’m not the first one to mention it, but what about copyright violations and plagiary? And could it be that as the user base grows, Steemit will attract pornographic and violent content in ever bigger quantities? And does the community see that as a problem or not? Who curates the curators anyway?

Journalism
Apart from these concerns, I’m wondering about the impact platforms like Steemit could have on journalism and mainstream media. I would welcome all your thoughts and comments on the subject. I can see two ways to look at this:
1. They will replace (a part of) mainstream media in the same way that other blockchain ecosystems eliminate the middlemen. You no longer need a publisher or a tv station to build an audience, create content, sell advertising and pay your editorial staff. Relevant stories will find their relevant audiences and journalists will be able to work and earn money independently.
2. They will become an additional outlet for traditional news media. Just like anyone else, media brands can create an account on Steemit where they post their content, engage with their readers and viewers and derive revenue from it.
The experience in my own country is that news brands still do matter as a “quality label” for consumer, so I’m not convinced that news production & consumption will become completely fragmented. But at the same time, I can see the potential that this model has in the long run for freelancers and individual journalists.

Just a few thoughts and questions from a curious reporter. I'm looking forward to your comments, which I’ll hopefully be able to use in any future reporting.  
For those who want to engage more personally, tou can find me on these other social platforms:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wimdepreter
https://twitter.com/wdp1970