New Journalism Delivery System: Here It Comes

At a time when newspapers are near the end of their string of centuries of dominance of delivering news to the public comes the news that the Associated Press--long the base for much of the non-local news in the local paper--will deliver investigative journalism from non-profit sources in the coming months. This is an experiment, but it looks like the next logical step in the process of changing over from newspapers to whatever's next.

The New York Times' story this morning says that reporting from Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica will be delivered to 1,500 news outlets, as any other AP dispatches would show up on copy editors' computers.

The AP says the experiment will last for six months. It reports that "independent groups doing investigative journalism have grown in number and size, fueled by foundations and wealthy patrons, and are offering their work to newspapers, magazines, television and radio news programs, and news Web sites. ProPublica was created in 2007 and the Investigative Reporting Workshop in 2008. The Center for Investigative Reporting has operated for more than three decades, and is doubling in size. The four groups combined have more than 50 professional journalists."

In our own region, we have a miniature non-profit version of news gathering at New River Voice, Tim Jackson's newspaper-turned-Web site in Radford.