[ThomPete]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough so for that, I apologies.

So what I am basically saying is that investigative journalism IS already sustainable it's just not a business.

It's if anything a process or a number of very loosely defined processes if even that.

The process is going to cost whatever it cost to investigate whatever it is you want to investigate and the only way to make it "sustainable" (cheaper) is through the development of other areas which has nothing to do with that process.

The link I reference shows a pretty simple, cheap and powerful form of investigative journalism (he more or proved Theranos was not working).

If you want to break into the US military and steal their secrets it's going to take your whisteblowers to get the information.

So trying to put it into a business context is misleading as it's just really a broad area of snooping around hoping to find some dirt.