The newspapers haven't but some of their journalists certainly have, through (now defunct) platforms like spot.us or even just Kickstarter. The way I see it, wo

The newspapers haven't but some of their journalists certainly have, through (now defunct) platforms like spot.us or even just Kickstarter. The way I see it, working as a data journalist, the problem is that you never know beforehand what will turn up and "we will spend three months investigating this thing and who knows, maybe something interesting will turn up or maybe nothing at all" is not something you can easily get people excited about.