By JOAN JACOBSON
As newspapers shrink at an alarming rate, new websites are popping up to replace them (yes, like Brew). And with the recent closing of The Baltimore Examiner, two former Examiner reporters and an editor have started a slick-looking site called Investigative Voice.
Though not all the stories are actually investigative – they’re what we used to just call solid news – they are nevertheless a welcome addition to the ever-shriveling daily news coverage of Baltimore.
Steve Janis, the reporter who contributed a heavy volume of stories at the Examiner (sometimes three a day), from the day it opened until the day it closed, is well-suited for this three-person website, though he admitted in a brief conversation with Brew that he’ll probably never sleep. Still, he is upbeat about this reinvention of American journalism and says the new website “frees us from a business model that didn’t work.”
He’s still not sure how it’ll support itself, but is hopeful that increasing readership will bring advertisers to pay the bills.
