The Center of Public Integrity is to adopt a new strategy that will aim to match donations with earned income in the hope of finding a more sustainable path for nonprofit journalism, reported Politico. The Center's website will seek to become a high-traffic destination and generate revenue through advertising and membership.

Earlier this month, the Center for Public Integrity announced that it was merging with the nonprofit Huffington Post Investigative Fund, a move that involved six Huff Po reporters moving over to the Center.

According to Politico, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has agreed to give all its assets to the Center in exchange for the Huffington Post running up to three of the Center's stories each day.

Bill Buzenburg, CPI's executive director said "the merge inspired the Center to reach further and raise more revenue in order to take advantage of a void in the marketplace to do more of this narrow and deep investigative reporting."

But is there such a big void? Roy Greenslade in the UK's Evening Standard argues that although some "publications have tightened their belts too much to employ the luxury of investigative reporters, investigative journalism is still very much alive and kicking."

The Evening Standard uses two separate award ceremonies held for investigative journalism as an example that it hasn't gone anywhere. Chairman of judges, Brian MacArthur told the Standard that "they could have compiled at least two more shortlists of roughly equivalent quality from almost 50 entries."

"There were great examples from everywhere, from the national daily and Sunday titles to small weeklies," he said. "Investigative journalists are flourishing on regional evenings and local papers too. It was a genuine pleasure to read them."

Another boost for investigative journalism has just come from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. The non-profit just donated $42,000 in grants funding eleven reporting projects to be published or broadcast in the United States, as well as two investigations overseas, FIJ announced. The fund also aids metro and regional investigative and ethnic media watchdog reporting.

But all sides agree that in order for investigative journalism to continue moving forward, many publications need to develop better multimedia strategies while maintaining high ethical and accuracy guidelines. Politico says the Center for Public Integrity is planning to expand digitally by "redesigning their website, embracing social media and launching a new digital format for reading long-form journalism that will work on all mobile devices."

The Standard's Roy Greenslade contemplates a "bright future" in the possible collaboration between bloggers and professional journalists, though he agrees with Rupert Murdoch on the point that "there will always be the need for the retention of 'big media' to act as a public watchdog on 'big government' and 'big business'."

But whether there is a budget for it or not, the fact remains that accurate investigative journalism is needed to keep accountability within our systems. But between the determination of the public and non-profit sectors, it seems developments will continue to outnumber failures and investigative journalism is around to stay.

"We want to be a model for this kind of journalism going forward," Buzenburg said. "We want to show that it can be done, and it can be done well. It can fill a void."