Huff Post Launches Investigative Fund

A new investigative journalism project funded by the Huffington Post and the Atlantic Philanthropies is about to be launched.

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund will use its £1.2m starting budget to pay a team of ten reporters and freelancers to get digging and produce a range of in-depth investigative reports concerning the American economy.

HuffPost founder Ariana Huffington says the project has been created in response to fears that industry cutbacks will affect the quality and quantity of investigative journalism

Writing on the HuffPost, she continues: “All who recognise the indispensable role good journalism plays in our democracy are looking for ways to preserve it during this transitional period for the media.

“For too long, whether it’s coverage of the war in Iraq or the economic meltdown, we’ve had too many autopsies and not enough biopsies.

“The HuffFund is our attempt to change this. It will also provide new opportunities for seasoned journalists who have been laid off or forced into early retirement.”

Huffington also announced that the resulting reports would be published on the HuffPost and would also be made freely available to any other publishers.

Among the partners working with the HuffPost on this project are the Columbia School of Journalism and Jay Rosen from New York University.

More about the fund can be found on Rosen’s Press Think blog and on guardian.co.uk.