Jarvis, whose weekly column discusses the issue in Monday's edition of MediaGuardian, does not think that Huffington's move is 'a sign of surrender in the hunt for a sustainable business model for journalism'. Foundations won't take over newspapers, Jarvis predicts. "It is an empty hope for white knights to save news from inevitable change and business reality," he tells Journalism.co.uk.
Unsurprisingly, New York University's Jay Rosen, well-followed for his deliberation on issues surrounding journalism and the internet, spent a long time deciding whether to join the new Huffington Post Investigative Fund as a paid senior consultant.
When Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the HuffingtonPost, first approached him the fund was still an 'uncertain thing,' he says. So Rosen, who founded NewAssignment.net and blogs at PressThink, sent her his initial thoughts and waited to see how funding and structure took shape, he tells Journalism.co.uk in an interview at the Arthur L. Carter journalism institute at NYU.
"The thing that's really interested me is bringing together networks of people with professional journalists to do stories that would be hard to do," he says. It is also the idea of bringing together the 'strength of [user] attachment' with funding that attracted him, he adds.
When Rosen, who also worked with HuffingtonPost on the OffTheBus citizen journalism project, was fully convinced that appropriate funding was secured - via The Huffington Post and The Atlantic Philanthropies - and that he had 'got on the same page' as Arianna Huffington, Nick Penniman, the fund's executive director [formerly of the American News Project], and the other participants, he formally agreed to be a part of the process and 'try a mix of things'.
"Now we have a new editor with money, and a mandate to produce investigative journalism. Just being in on defining the fund - how it works, the operating style - is very attractive to me, intellectually. That's cool, that's exciting," he says.
While the fund is 'in a different setting' from Rosen's original NewAssignment.net ideas - first outlined in blog posts in July 2006 - the premise remains the same, with user participation posited centrally, he says. The fund, he explains, will be bringing together traditional, experienced reporters with pro-ams. Long and short-term projects can be launched and experimentation is not something to shy away from, he adds.
The HuffingtonPost's new investigative fund has provoked a range of reactions among media commentators - much of it positive so far. Jeff Jarvis, for example, quickly turned around a blog post, ahead of the fund's announcement, which praised the creation of a 'slice of a new journalism pie'. "This, I’ve long held, is where foundation and public support will enter into the new ecosystem of journalism," he wrote.
"There's still a market demand for investigations. The [new] news organisations that succeed them [newspapers] more than ever need to do things that are uniquely valuable. If you want to be found in a search world, you can't make it any more on commodity news," Jarvis tells Journalism.co.uk, as part of a longer interview at his CUNY office, just near the New York Times building in Manhattan.
"If we took an audit of all of the journalism in the city (...) all the money spent on journalism in the current structure, and take the proportion spent on investigative, it would be tiny."
The point Jarvis is making is that while traditional journalism business models are rapidly crumbling, there is still space - and more importantly, demand - for investment in investigative work. The 'slice', however, could be presented in different ways: via bloggers, for example, and with the support of non-profit foundation-funder foundations, and public funding.
"We'll see foundation and public support able to fund a decent number of investigations," he adds.
Speaking to Journalism.co.uk ahead of the podcast recording with Huffington, he is optimistic about the project, but says that "the rap on Arianna will - of course - be that she is partisan and we're not used to that here, like [you are] in the UK."
When asked whether that matters, Jarvis says he'll 'give the answer the Guardian gives or the Telegraph gives'. "Yes, you know their world view and where they come from, but they have to succeed or fail on their intellectual honesty."
Alongside the excitement and praise, however, criticisms have been made about the Huffington Post's role in it - in the comments below Rosen's introduction, and Jarvis' initial post, for example. "This isn't a way to rescue independent journalism. It's another nail in the coffin," 'Mike' writes on Rosen's blog, criticising the 'partisan' content on HuffingtonPost's main site.
Rosen, however, defends the fund: "That's what a lot of people don't understand - they think it's like the new investigative desk of the Huffington Post - it's not. It's a new non-profit, with funding from several sources, of which the Huffington Post is one."
While it's branded with the HuffingtonPost name, 'it's important to recognise there's a new institution,' he adds. It can 'only operate in certain ways and so it has to have its own governance'.
In his MediaGuardian column Jarvis comments on the concerns that donors will influence the HuffPost Fund coverage. But, Arianna Huffington says, in her original interview with Jarvis: "I don't see investigative journalism as advocacy. Investigative journalism is first of all truth-seeking."
Large lump sums: the problems
"I have reservations about every lump of money," Rosen tells Journalism.co.uk. "If I had one wish in this whole business model discussion, it would be that everybody would drop the idea that there is a single solution."
"All models of subsidy for journalism have weaknesses, have downsides, have strengths. The 'one' model [idea] is stupid. How do we know there will be this money in three years? We don't."
That's a philosophy echoed by ProPublica's managing editor Stephen Engelberg, even though his non-profit organisation - a well-resourced and respected investigative team which supplies investigations to other media bodies - does rely on one substantial funder - the Sandler Foundation.
"I frankly think [large foundation donations are] not the answer because it seems to me you really need a hybrid of revenue streams," he tells Journalism.co.uk during an interview at the ProPublica headquarters in New York.
"We're very fortunate to have it [foundation funding] in the short-run. We see this not as a long, long-term thing - I think over time we're going to have to evolve too, but in the short-term you have foundations - people who can pay for this."
He cites the MinnPost as an example of how journalism can use a pool of resources: "They try and take some of the Obama model and say, well, you can get 10,000 people to give you $5 - that's money, and $50 - that's real money.
"So you have large and small donors. You have some advertising. Web advertising is selling very cheaply right now, but it's something. You try and figure out if there's any kind of merchandise you can sell. Anything at all you can create revenue from.
"People talk about non-profit journalism and they say 'well isn't it great? You take that profit thing out and we're all going to be fine'. Well, no, non-profit journalism doesn't mean you can spend more than you have. It just means that when you're done not spending more than you have, you don't then have to create an additional percentage which has to go to Rupert Murdoch."
There are still expenses that have to be met, Engelberg says. ProPublica, he says, is not about proving a business model, but about proving a journalism model. That's a 'luxury' of which he is well aware, he says, and one he intends to make the most of while he can.
ProPublica is a frequently cited example of successful non-profit investigative journalism, and sustainability of such an enterprise is the key question, raised by all the interviewees consulted for this feature.
"ProPublica is funded almost exclusively by the Sandlers, and God bless for them for committing to that project for as many years as they have," says Aron Pilhofer, editor of newsroom interactive technologies at the New York Times.
"But ProPublica, I think, would be the first ones to tell you, don't really know how successful non-profit journalism is going to be."
"The non-profit model could be part of it but no-one knows. I still think there's a viable, commercial model," Pilhofer adds, explaining his view that there are new ways of earning revenue from advertising and other projects, a model which is currently 'maturing', as traditional advertising models shift along with changing patterns of news.
The HuffPost Investigative Fund's future
The Fund is already underway: Huffington has said she is ready to interview potential editors and reporters and also to start receiving proposals for investigative projects.
Rosen reminds Journalism.co.uk that experimentation will be crucial and that nothing is fixed. ["With] any open-source system you have to figure out the control methods. Some of the projects will be more experimental, some will be more traditional," he says.
Jarvis asks Huffington in the forthcoming MediaGuardian podcast whether she sees the fund as 'a note of surrender in the search for sustainable business models'. "She said no, this is just one of many models. I agree," he tells Journalism.co.uk. Huffington will be raising money from the public as well as foundations, he adds.
Jarvis promises us a 'provocative' conversation with Huffington in this first edition of the new monthly 'Media Talk USA' podcast; this should just be the start of the non-profit discussion, as we see the latest of the new journalism ventures enter the traditional media's investigative territory.
Fuller features on the people interviewed for this article will be published soon on Journalism.co.uk as part of a series of articles about journalism in New York: watch out for the tag 'JournalismNY'.
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