Anne is Very Happy Now
It is amazing, the human capacity to make do and get by, when really we would prefer an entirely different set of circumstances. Perhaps this adaptive trait is what has made us such a successful species—but I didn’t start this post to talk about evolutionary biology. Heavens no!
No, I am excited to spread the word about a major new development in the increasingly adrift world of media outlets. Newspapers across the nation are tanking, newsrooms at every major network are having their budgets slashed, and even the internet has not been able to pick up the slack in terms of investigative journalism—with notable exceptions, of course.
Yesterday, however, I found out via Jeff Jarvis that a new, independent, investigative journalism enterprise has started up, ProPublica. From their “Who We Are” blurb:
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them…
We have created an independent newsroom, located in Manhattan and led by some of the nation’s most distinguished editors, and staffed at levels unprecedented for a non-profit organization. Indeed, we believe, this is the largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States.
Yay! This just makes me incredibly happy. They have created six categories for the stories they produce: Business & Money; Justice & Law; Energy & Environment; Government & Politics; Media & Technology; and National Security. You can subscribe to RSS feeds for any or all of these categories, or just browse their main page to see the stories posted since they started, in late April.
I could go on about how blog-based software (which is what they’re using) is revolutionizing both collaborative publishing and website development in general, but that would bore even me. And I will leave it to others to say hopeful things about how this will hasten the return of the democratic process to our suffering nation. Instead, I’m going to head over there right now and start reading.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Nice! I’ve got the RSS for the site in Google Reader now.