Tomorrow at 10:15 at the Watchdog Conference on Investigative Journalism:

INNOVATIONS II: Innovations on Funding Models for Investigative Reporting

10:15-11:45am on Friday, March 13

(Panel Briefing by Charles Lewis)

Amidst all of the turmoil in the media industry, new economic models for funding investigative journalism – nonprofit, for profit and hybrid – have been emerging in recent years. Josh Marshall’s political blog, Talking Points Memo, winner of the 2007 George Polk Award for its legal reporting, is a small for-profit company funded by Google Ad revenue and reader donations. Global Post is a new for-profit company attempting to cover the world with more than 70 reporters paid a modest monthly fee and an ownership share, the venture supported by advertising, syndication and paid memberships. Grant-funded, nonprofit investigative reporting centers have existed in the world since the late 1970s, and now operate from California to Tajikistan, from the Philippines to Romania. The three largest U.S. centers currently are the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica, which began last year. But now new state, regional, national and international-focused investigative reporting centers have begun in just the past two or three years in the U.S., some of them at universities, partnering with local NPR stations and other, commercial media outlets.

Will this nonprofit investigative journalism modus operandi, with all of its different permutations, continue to grow, and to what extent is it a solution to the current economic crisis? What are the challenges and limitations of this approach? From the innovative, new for-profit and non-profit models, is there a financially viable way to more fully employ the immensely talented investigative reporters who now have nowhere to work?

Moderator: Betsy West, associate professor, Columbia Journalism School
Alex Gibney, independent documentary film-maker: Financing and marketing investigative documentaries
Andrew Golis, deputy publisher, Talking Points Memo
Andrew Donohue, executive editor, VoiceofSanDiego.org
Bob Moser, editor, Texas Observer
Brant Houston, Knight Chair for Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois

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