Q: Do you think that serious journalism can pay?

A: I think on its own, probably not. Certainly the learning from our site in Hawaii shows how difficult it is. Advertisers don’t want to put their ads next to the investigative story; it’s extremely difficult to do that. And very few people today actually read those serious news stories on the Web now. The audience for the most important stories can be depressingly small. There will always be a core of readers willing to support that work, but it is a tiny, tiny percentage of broader society. That’s part of the reason we are doing a general-interest site, to work on how we get a general-interest audience to become engaged citizens.