Brick House is a new news organization that calls itself “the wolf-proof media cooperative.” It has emerged in part out of a failed experiment, Civil, which sought to use Bitcoin-like blockchain technology to shore up the ailing news business.

Brick House’s founder, the veteran journalist and entrepreneur Maria Bustillos, explains why she thinks a simpler, older model of cooperative ownership could be a better way forward—even while she remains hopeful about the sci-fi promise of blockchains.