One of the obvious big worries about journalism's contraction is what will become of investigative reporting. First, there's fewer and fewer journalists around to do it, and the money to support the effort isn't in media organizations right now. Where will new support systems come from?

Here's a link to a declaration by a group of nonprofit news organizations committing to creating an investigative journalism support institution. Their declaration came out July 1, so the Investigative News Network may be something worth tracking as they get up and running,

An excerpt from what they have titled "The Pocantico Declaration" (Pocantico was just where they held their conference...):

Therefore, with a full appreciation of both the complexities and the opportunities to be achieved by more formalized collaboration, the nonprofit news publishers at Pocantico hereby declare that preparations should be immediately made to form a collaboration, the Investigative News Network (working title). Its mission is very simple: to aid and abet, in every conceivable way, individually and collectively, the work and public reach of its member news organizations, including, to the fullest extent possible, their administrative, editorial and financial wellbeing. And, more broadly, to foster the highest quality investigative journalism, and to hold those in power accountable, at the local, national and international levels.

Among the nonprofit news publishers writing this declaration included folks from NPR, IRE, Investigative Reporting Workshop, MinnPost, St. Louis Beacon, voiceofsandiego.org, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, Center for Public Integrity and others. Observers included someone from the Sacramento Bee and folks from Columbia journalism school and USC Annenberg.

Who knows, maybe this is where one new model will emerge.