I’m glad that an alliance of nonprofits are joining hands to create an organization to promote investigative journalism. That’s important stuff.

I just wish that their “declaration” kicking off their collaboration read a bit more like a classic declaration and less like the annex of a Department of Commerce IG report. Here’s an excerpt from what’s known as the Pocantico Declaration:

Recognizing, that there are many forms of potential collaboration: Editorial, which at the least could be doing joint accountability journalism projects, publishing on the same day on multiple websites with other, multimedia partners, which would entail efficient, shared information, reporting and synchronous editing; Administrative, exchanging information about necessary organizational “back office” functions such as employee benefits, health care and general liability insurance, libel review and insurance, directors and officers insurance, etc., and perhaps even centralizing some of these functions to increase efficiencies; and Financial, at a minimum, exchanging development-related information and even jointly fundraising, at the most, pioneering new economic models to help to monetize the shared, combined content of the member organizations, in order to achieve a more sustainable journalism

And that’s the second paragraph!