Huffington Post Investigative Fund has produced 50 stories since September

Most stories have focused on problems in the banking and health care industries. A recent story about Benjamin French, a 12-year old born with a deformed arm who was denied insurance by his provider after he had reached his maximum coverage limit, made it as far as the Senate floor during the recent health care reform debate.

"The goal of nonprofit journalism like this is to create impact in the world," said Penniman. "We managed to affect both the debate and one person's life."

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is supported by the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Knight Foundation, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, and the Markle Foundation. The fund is also affiliated and funded in part by news aggregator, the Huffington Post.

The fund's connection to the Huffington Post came under scrutiny in January, when Gawker alleged that the Huffington Post was reaping the benefits of the fund's work more any other news outlet. Of the "forty other outlets" the fund claimed had published their work, Gawker found most were blogs and aggregators like AlterNet and commondreams.org.

The fund's most read pieces, however, had received hundred of thousands of pageviews, said multimedia editor Amanda Zamora.

"There's definitely an editorial firewall between the two organizations," Penniman told the American Journalism Review. "But we do share a common vision about the deep dysfunctionality of our democracy and the need to shine a light on it."

"The Investigative Fund's donors do not have a role in its editorial decisions," reads the fund's website.

The nonprofit model is considered by some in the industry as the future of journalism. Even in a difficult economic climate, nonprofits like InvestigateWest have received generous grants. The slow start of the AP's nonprofit distribution deal, however, has worried media pundits.


Sources: American Journalism Review, Huffington Post Investigative Fund