By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 22nd, 2024
AP plans to make “Pulitzer Drops” scarce to preserve its status by creating a virtual buyer queue and will drop every two weeks.
In collaboration with Xooa, The Associated Press is confident of starting its NFT marketplace for photojournalism soon. The company’s interest in selling digital arts was piqued months ago following the recent mass adoption of Non-fungible tokens.
The world news platform opines that journalism could be fused with NFT with collectors purchasing “the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic photojournalism” instead of the regular pictures of celebrities and athletes. AP also assured that its incoming Photojournalism NFT will be released with “broad and inclusive price points.”
The announcement also revealed that the international news platform would pitch its tent with Polygon blockchain. Polygon was chosen for its environmentally friendly values and will host AP’s NFT systems.
Each digital art will come with metadata, educating the buyers and collectors about when, where, and how the pictures were gotten. By January 31, the first collection of Photojournalism NFT will be launched, and AP has hinted that the collection will include photos of “space, climate, war and other images to spotlights on the work of specific AP photographers.”
In the FAQ section of the announcement, AP said that its NFT is aimed at collectors who are looking to “seamlessly buy, sell and trade official AP digital collectibles through the marketplace.”
This explains the non-metaverse tie-in on its incoming NFTs unlike other regular NFTs in the market. Also, the FAQ clears that buyers can use their credit cards or ETH to buy the NFT via MetaMask.
AP plans to make “Pulitzer Drops” scarce to preserve its status by creating a virtual buyer queue and will drop every two weeks. Buyers can resell their NFTs in the site’s secondary market too. According to the FAQ, the sales from the NFT collection will be used to fund journalism.
Another round of revenue will also be gotten from the secondary marketplace. For every resell, AP and Xooa get a 10% fee shared by both partners, as reiterated by Xooa spokesperson Lauren Easton.
Other Journalism-related Enterprises Dabbling with NFTs
Photojournalism NFT has been quite an area of interest for people in the NFT business; AP wouldn’t be the first to delve into it. Big shot news companies like New York Times and Quartz have established themselves in this area. Both news outlets have sold vital articles in the form of digital art.
Getty Images also showed a level of interest in the space last year though its CEO revealed that the firm would be taking its time to ease into the industry.