October 17, 2007

NYT: Group Plans to Provide Investigative Journalism

As struggling newspapers across the country cut back on investigative reporting, a new kind of journalism venture is hoping to fill the gap.

Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a group of investigative journalists who will give away their work to media outlets.

The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to other media) where the group hopes the work will make the strongest impression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations.

Very interesting. I can see parallels between the newspaper barons of the last century who used their papers as political tools (for good or bad) despite them not making huge profits. This is distributed social philanthropy, a kind of pro-active intellectual charity if you will. Nice to see that despite the newspaper business going into meltdown the money still finds the quality. Now, who wants to do it in the UK? ta Jo

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