Steve Outing visits one of the most important challenges facing journalism in his latest column: Will investigative journalism survive? (it’s related to the who pays question discussed here earlier). I hope to get back to this in detail, here first just one of many interesting thoughts Outing sketches:
The low cost of publishing on the Internet makes it likely that journalists and bloggers who take an investigative bent will publish such work independently, if they have to. As several experts who I interviewed for this article said, investigative journalists often put in extra hours on projects because they are passionate about telling the story — and don’t get paid extra for it. A lack of or very little money for independent Web publishing probably won’t deter the investigative journalist with a story he or she really wants to tell. [Brant Houston, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors] sees the Web as reviving the era of I.F. Stone-like independent investigative reporting. With the costs of publishing to a large audience so low, it’s likely that some independent reporters will discover an economic model that supports what they do. Houston thinks that in-depth niche-topic reporting has the potential to be particularly lucrative online.
Outing also points to an amazing story I had overlooked. Now that’s philanthropy with a purpose.
