(Community Matters) So many rabbit holes to run down, I don’t know where to start – but need to think more about this – Washington Guardian business model. Can deep investigative journalism be sustainably monetized in today’s market? I’m familiar with the Texas Tribune’s business model, and it’s highly dependent on philanthropic support. Should become familiar with Politico’s model. Time to call on my friends John Thornton & Evan Smith to better understand.
Playbook: FIRST LOOK – Columbia Journalism Review’s July/Aug. issue, “Something fishy? John Solomon had grand plans for the digital future of the Center for Public Integrity. But as his battle over the Center’s black-market-tuna investigation revealed, there was always a catch,” by Maria Blake , whose “work has appeared in Mother Jones, The Nation, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, Salon, and The Washington Monthly”: “When John Solomon took over as executive editor of The Washington Times in 2008, … Solomon believed he had hit on a formula that would bring in an abundance of profits: Invest in deep reporting, then pump the content … to audiences through multiple revenue-generating channels. ‘The idea is to create a four-dimensional product with multiple revenue streams,’ Solomon told me. ‘You put them all together, and you can build a business model as good as any in 20th-century journalism.’ … Solomon … assembled a team of investors and began negotiating with the Moon family to buy the paper, which the team tentatively planned to rename The Washington Guardian. When the talks collapsed, Solomon started laying plans to launch a new investigative digital daily under that name instead. …
“[W]hile he was trying to get the project off the ground, Solomon took … a … post at the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, one of the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit investigative journalism outfits. … Many staffers worried that the new financial targets [in a makeover plan Solomon had sold to the Center’s board] were wildly unrealistic, and that the turn toward daily journalism would squeeze out long-form investigations … …
“After leaving the Center, he was hired as editor of news and investigations for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. But he resigned abruptly in January, and has since rededicated himself to launching a new digital daily called The Washington Guardian. ‘It’s an investigative news project-something like Jack Anderson would do if he were still alive … A lot of people believe the industry is in the midst of this terrible Darwinian downsizing … I, for one, am intent on proving that the best days of journalism are ahead.'” Not online yet
–PLAYBOOK POSTSCRIPT: In a telephone conversation, Solomon declined to comment on the CJR piece. The Washington Guardian has a tentative launch date of July 16. Solomon emailed: “We’re resurrecting some of the fun fixtures of investigative journalism past. One of them is the Golden Hammer, a weekly feature on waste, fraud and abuse modeled after the late Bill Proxmire’s Golden Fleece.”
Community Matters 