Huffington Post to delve into investigative journalism
The Huffington Post has announced that it will begin an investigative journalism branch. I applaud this move, coming at a time when newspapers everywhere are cutting or eliminating the investigative reporting:
The Huffington Post said Sunday that it will bankroll a group of investigative journalists, directing them at first to look at stories about the nation’s economy.
The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.
Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said.
I attended a talk by Arianna Huffington last year. Her site’s procedure is that she doesn’t pay bloggers money to post at her site. Rather, they are rewarded (many of them richly) in traffic. This investigative reporting wing Huffpo continues that same basic model.
- The death of investigative journalism and the role of nonprofits in doing serious journalism
- Arianna Huffington on why the Right is wrong.
- Does anyone want to be the new Editorial Page Editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch?
- Huffington quackery
- Bloggers challenge corporate journalists to do real journalism
Investigative journalism is most likely to be more expensive than say, reporting today’s Britney Spears’ collapse.
Paying in traffic for this different, substantive kind of reporting may not be the best model, where some landmark piece of information could pass inadvertedly to oblivion.
It doesn’t seem likely that more of the same could work for this different type of material.
I’m sure the thinking brains behind the Huffington Post are probably many steps ahead in the game, anticipating what the new business models will look like in the future for this other, different side of the business.