• L.A. Times, Friday, May 18, 2012 2:17 PM

In some rare good news for newspaper hiring and investigative reporting, the Los Angeles Times said it will use a two-year, $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation to hire five dedicated journalists to cover such key beats as Vietnamese and Korean immigrant communities, the California prison system, the border region and Brazil.  Our math skills peg that at $100,000 annually per reporter, btw.  

Reporter James Rainey contrasts this to the recent trend of newspapers outsourcing substantial investigative reporting to nonprofits, giving as one example The New York Times' national edition. 

So it’s perhaps fitting that Mediabistro’s Betsy Rothstein just heard from former New York Times staffer Adam Chadwick that he needs funds to complete “Fit for Print,” a documentary three years in the making about the decline in investigative reporting stemming from newspaper layoffs.  Chadwick asked her to “spread the word,” so she wrote about it  and included a link to a promo clip featuring the Times’ David Barstow, the Washington Post’s Bob Kaiser, and Laura Frank from the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News.  Rothstein says that Chadwick has 22 days to raise $10,000 and can be reached at adamgchadwick@gmail.com.

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