The promise of a newspaper’s investigative spinoff

The latest edition of American Journalism Review has an in-depth piece on the thinking behind the San Diego Union-Tribune ’s willingness to spin off (though that’s not the official phraseology) its investigative team as an independent nonprofit, the Watchdog Institute. Rather than wait for the ax to fall on her four-person team, investigative editor Lorie Hearn did the deed on her own terms — terms that allow her team to publishing their work in the U-T, but also getting the team off the

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