Work for Displaced Journalists

The Huffington Post announced yesterday that it will pay investigative journalists to write about the nation's economy:

"Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said."The Huffington Post Web site is a collection of opinionated blog entries and breaking news. It has seven staff reporters."Ms. Huffington said she and the donors were concerned that layoffs at newspapers were hurting investigative journalism at a time when the nation’s institutions need to be watched closely. She hopes to draw from the ranks of laid-off journalists."

With the demise of newspapers on the horizon, there has been much discussion lately about the state of journalism.  The concern: the quality of reporting will decline if we rely only on unpaid "consumer journalists" posting stories online.  The Huffington Post is proposing this solution, with the hope that their actions will encourage other news outlets to do the same.