Pierre Omidyar, one of the founders of Ebay, has announced
that he's funding a journalism project with Glenn Greenwald, Laura
Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, starting with $250 million
dollars.
The word is Omidyar intends to create something that brings
together some of the best writers who have followings.
That got me thinking about who in the progressive media would
fit Omidyar's criteria and who I would be excited to see joining
what Greenwald has called a "dream" journalistic endeavor.
Here's my partial list. I know I will be leaving people out
who are deserving. This is simply an off-the-top-of-my-head list of
some people who could really soar if they had more funding and a
staff to help them. Some of them already have great arrangements,
so it is unlikely they'd be lured. But for many of these folks, it
would be wonderful to see their full talents unleashed with the
help of healthy funding.
Matt Taibbi -- currently at Rolling Stone. He's a total rock star in my mind, taking complex economic stories and making them rivetingly understandable. Marcy Wheeler - formerly of firedoglake, currently publishing emptywheel.com. The depth of her investigative reporting is so often jaw dropping.
Kevin
Gosztola is on fire, covering Bradley Manning's
trial, NSA, major activism events.
Kevin's training in multimedia has paid off with his audio and
video work, as well as his writing.
Greg
Palast is a NY Times best-selling author
and BBC investigative reporter who has broken major investigative
stories
Naomi Klein is an
extraordinary investigative writer and visionary with a huge
following.
Lee Fang is a brilliant
investigative reporter, bringing to light connections between right
wing organizations and billionaires. Giving him a team to help
him-- that'll be amazing.
Ellen
Brown is an attorney and president of
the Public Banking Institute. Her writing on economics is giving us
a new way to think about banking, money, economics and
capitalism.
Cenk Uygur is a tough, smart
progressive who analyzes what's happening in depth.
Amy Goodman is an investigative TV journalist par
excellence.
Pratap Chatterjee investigates corporate
misbehavior and hidden connections at corpwatch.org
Katherine
Eban is an award-winning
investigative reporter
Her investigation of the indian drug firm, Ranbaxy is
incredible.
Brad Friedman has done a heroic job investigating
election integrity issues, reporting them at his site, bradblog,
and on his radio show.
Arundhati Roy is a Booker prize winning Indian writer
on human rights and the environment.
Will Potter does great investigative reporting
about eco-activism on his blog, greenisthenewred.com
Martha Rosenberg--
great investigative reporting on food and drug safety and big
Pharma and big Agra.
Scott Horton is an
attorney who writes on human rights. He's a columnist for Harper's
magazine
Gareth Porter is an award winning
investigative journalist focusing on national security policy. He
won an award for coverage of propaganda
Wendell
Potter was a top PR exec at CIGNA and became a
whistleblower. He's become a regular writer on healthcare and the
abuse of PR. He's author of the book Deadly
Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR
Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans
Dave Zirin is the
leading writer on sports from a political (progressive)
perspective, with many books written, a movie and many appearances
on TV-- MSNBC, ESPN, Democracy Now.
Robert Whitaker is a science and medicine writer
and investigative reporter who's written for the Boston Globe, with
several books out.
Jeff Sharlet
He is a contributing editor for
Harper's and
Rolling Stone . and a sharp, smart, award winning writer.
I've enjoyed his focus on religion and it's intersection with
politics. He's the author of The Family.
Here are more people who would be great additions:
David Lindorff, David Fiderer, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman,
Thom Hartmann, Andrew Kreig, Ray McGovern (former CIA,) Danny
Schecter, David Sirota, David Swanson,
For those with a sharper edge-- Glen Ford and Chris Hedges
would be great.
This is a a very incomplete, off-the-top-of-my-head list.
Please add your comments with suggestions on others or comments on
these.
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