Getting serious about a new kind of journalism

Staci Kramer reports that Post-Dispatch investigative reporter Christopher Carey is striking out on his own with a website called Sharesleuth, which will engage stringers and non-journalists in a quest to uncover "stock fraud and executive malfeasance on the national and international level."

Mark Cuban is bankrolling it.

If it works, this is huge. Much bigger than, say, Om Malik or Scoble and all the other stuff that's buzzing the net today.

We've seen plenty of examples of lightweight, entertaining entrepreneurial sites (usually blogs) that work. But what many of us have feared is that we'll not see the Web provide an economic model that will sustain serious journalism, the kind that historically has been generated by huge daily newspapers. Best wishes to Carey in this new project.