News organizations with shrinking budgets are forming an increasingly symbiotic relationship with a new wave of independent online news sites. Many of the sites are staffed by pink-slipped print reporters.

The best example is CBS News, which formalized a partnership with GlobalPost, which boasts 70 correspondents in more than 50 countries. CBS's "60 Minutes," has an ongoing partnership with ProPublica, the site run by Paul Steiger and Stephen Engelberg, from The Wall Street Journal and The Oregonian, respectively. PBS' Frontline is working on a project with ProPublica about post-Katrina corruption.

To some observers it looks like Western news groups are using these partnerships to put a Band-Aid over the gaping hole of cuts in their foreign bureaus. But Paul Friedman, executive vice president of CBS News, says it goes beyond that. "When you close bureaus around the world for economic reasons you still need people on the ground to tell you something important is happening, here's the person to speak to," he says. If these partnerships are a new reality of doing business, they also offer opportunities to incubate the next form of journalism.

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