An extremely expensive cover story — with a new way of footing the bill » Nieman Journalism Lab

An extremely expensive cover story — with a new way of footing the bill » Nieman Journalism Lab
The cover story in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine is a 13,000-word investigation of the New Orleans hospital where patients were euthanized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It’s a remarkable and tragic story that may also represent the most expensive single piece of print journalism in years.

This is the new economics of news production: The reporter, Sheri Fink, began working on the project in 2007 as a fellow at the Kaiser Foundation and stayed on the story nearly full-time after joining ProPublica, the non-profit, investigative-journalism outfit, in 2008. Later that year, Fink and her editors began collaborating with the Times Magazine, which did not pay for the piece. It’s also available on ProPublica’s site, and anyone is free to republish the article in full beginning on September 29.

Gerald Marzorati, editor of the Times Magazine, caused a minor stir this week when he estimated that the article cost $400,000 to produce. That turns out to be an exaggeration, but the order of magnitude is correct.