Closure of Exaro highlights challenge to investigative journalism

Exaro, the investigative journalism site, has closed down just one week after a new management team was installed and insisting that it was very much open for business.

The Covent Garden based online publication was launched in October 2011 with the journalistic ambition to produce “evidence-based, open-access journalism – not spin, not churnalism, not hacking – just journalism about what should be transparent but isn’t.

Notable scoops included coverage of tax avoidance schemes employed by prominent members of the civil service, allegations of bribery connected with a UK-Saudi Arabian defence contract and the Elm Guest House abuse scandal.

Over its five year history the site received much praise, winning the Best Investigative Journalism category in the 2012 Online Media Awards. It also faced criticism.

In 2015 Private Eye Magazine published an article that said: “Exaro is struggling to live up to its strapline of ‘holding power to account.’ For several months the investigative site has published no news at all apart from the latest paedo developments and, slightly bizarrely, items on a corporate insolvency monitoring service it runs alongside its ‘news.’”

Despite the fact Exaro punched above its weight in terms the stories it broke, it failed to build a successful commercial model.

Former Exaro editor-in-chief, Mark Watts, told journalists: “One of the things that has been very frustrating has been the lack of direction in terms of commercial strategy.”

Exaro had made a number of attempts to build a commercial offering around its content including charging for data services and events which ultimately failed to take off.

Exaro’s problems are not uncommon in today’s new industry. Investigative journalism, by its very nature, is time-consuming and therefore expensive to produce. The future of quality, investigative journalism have been put front and centre of campaigns highlighting the news funding crisis many newspapers face.

The web demands high volumes of stories with the potential to go “viral”. This favours more rapidly produced (as it happens) news coverage, supplemented with the usual celebrity, sport and lifestyle clickbait journalism.

The world of journalism is a poorer place with the closure of Exaro. We must ask ourselves, if readers and advertisers won’t (or cannot) fund investigative journalism – who will?