Next week, a group of about 26 online news startups, newspapers, broadcasters and academics will gather at Pocantico, a former Rockefeller family estate, to discuss funding an investigative news network, Outsell’s Ken Doctor reports. As news staffs cut to bone, a number of non-profits have been helping to fill the void—and a disproportionate share of that money has been going to investigative-news ventures. Over the last four years, about $128 million in grants have flowed to roughly 115 news projects, with the largest share, $65 million, going to “investigative” projects, Doctor notes, citing figures from the Knight Foundation-funded J-Lab. “Sources tell me that major foundations—some that have previously considered ‘news and information’ to be fairly far afield from their philanthropic mandates—are now talking about the large sums of money that may be needed to fill the gaps left by cratering dailies in big metro markets,” Doctor says.

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