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!

Local TV isn't likely to expose a crooked mayor, as the Detroit Free Press did.

Arguable point, especially to Tom Sherwood, the dean of reporting here in municipalDCworld. Sherwood quickly banged out an e-mail to Kurtz asking, "[W]hat prompted the wholesale, gratuitous slap at "local tv" not being worth anything when it comes to investigative, serious reporting?"

The tall, baritone-voiced local from WRC-TV has some bona fides in this area. As his missive points out, his reporting has gotten people fired and had policies changed in local government. And Sherwood advises Kurtz to look at the best reporting of local TV stations---you'll find some fine investigative work in there, he says. "A wholesale dismissal, I believe, was uncalled for in your otherwise important story."

"Important story" is a bit too much praise for this particular Kurtz piece. The Post's top media reporter, a very responsive soul, had this to say about the assertion: "I should have qualified the statement a bit; there are a relative handful of stations that do good investigative reporting. But I was talking about the big, sweeping, labor-intensive investigations that topple a mayor or expose sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Given the cutbacks in the broadcasting, those are rare indeed in local TV."