These articles also left the impression that the journalists were hired believing that Omidyar was funding this org with $250m and partway through he switched t

These articles also left the impression that the journalists were hired believing that Omidyar was funding this org with $250m and partway through he switched to wanting them to make money / be self sustainable. We still essentially have no method after craigslist destroyed the newspapers to support long form investigative journalism. The huffpo is what you get when you try to make journalism pay its own way; there are only a tiny handful of exceptions (nyt, ft, the la times has repeated layoffs, perhaps the wsj though that's really murdoch's right wing hobbyhorse).