Should a nonprofit news venture be subsidizing the reporting of a for-profit organizations?

That question is provoking lively debate in news and nonprofit circles after The Miami Herald published an opinion article that criticizes the new nonprofit news organization ProPublica, which focuses on producing investigative journalism.

ProPublica was created with a pledge of $30-million over the next three years from Herbert and Marion Sandler, The Chronicle reported last fall.

Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, wrote in the Herald that ProPublica’s recent collaboration with CBS News’ 60 Minutes on a broadcast about the Arab language news network Al-Hurra, amounted to ProPublica’s subsidizing “the cost of a segment for 60 Minutes, the most financially successful news show in the history of U.S. television.”

Mr. Wasserman also notes that a similar story was published in The Washington Post, making ProPublica’s coverage redundant, he says.

“How can ProPublica be filling a grievous gap in the information available to the public when its story is duplicated simultaneously by a major newspaper?” he writes.

Mr. Wasserman adds that the organization could make more of a difference by endowing reporting jobs at mid-sized newspapers.

“The next wave of nonprofit funding should go to creating positions in regional newsrooms for reporters who will” write investigative pieces, he writes. “Just as universities use outside endowments to lure faculty to desired areas, so should news organizations. Five million dollars could provide 100 newsrooms with $50,000 apiece, a generous head-start on a salary for an investigative ace who has roots in a community where there’d be no danger of duplicating coverage.”

Tom Durso writes about the article on his blog, The 501cFiles.

“ProPublica is supposed to be digging up the stuff that the corporate media types are too hamstrung to publish,” he writes. “Big-corporation journalism is producing fewer of these necessary pieces around the country, and ProPublica’s mindset and resources are desperately needed. But if it’s merely going to “subsidize” corporate pieces, as Wasserman put it, and run stories that are already being covered, what’s the point?”

Richard Tofel, general manager of ProPublica, responds to the criticism on Jim Romenesko’s blog at The Poynter Institute’s Web site by writing that the new organization’s goal is to maximize the impact of investigative stories, which ProPublica achieved by collaborating with 60 Minutes.

He writes he is “delighted” that The Washington Post wrote a similar story because the coverage furthered the story’s impact, and that ProPublica continues to write follow up items on Al-Hurra.

“Our aim is to provide stories of force and value to readers,” he writes.

What do you think? Should donors follow the lead of the Sandlers in underwriting journalism projects?