SRF Heavy Industries

When Rupert Murdoch and his information sausage-grinder called NewsCorp bought the Wall Street Journal last year, Paul Steiger (the former managing editor of the WSJ) and Stephen Engelberg (former managing editor of the Oregonian and former investigative editor of the New York Times) put the gears in motion to start a publication centered on investigative journalism of the sort that is being phased out everywhere. ProPublica is dedicated to the public interest and is funded by foundations that support the idea of a free investigative press that doesn’t have to pimp itself out for advertising dollars or pander to readership prurience.

ProPublica went live on June 10th. So now there’s a week’s worth of stuff to go peruse. It is quite meaty.

There are RSS feeds galore, sorted by topic:

• Top Stories
• Business & Money
• Justice & Law
• Energy & Environment
• Government & Politics
• Health & Science
• Media & Technology
• National Security

I recommend you use the above links to form the foundation of your daily news diet.

Oh. And also. In light of the recent AP refutation of Fair Use by issuing takedown notices for excerpts in blogs and blog comments, followed by a slight backpedal that includes a schedule of licensing fees for excerpts as few as five words, ProPublica has announced that the entire publication is Creative Commons licensed. And the license page details that CC licensing does not at all interfere with your Fair Use rights.

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