I just started taking a class on politics and mass media. The class revolves around answering the question “Is the media necessary to keep a democracy functioning properly?”

That’s not a loaded question or anything.

It’s actually a question I’d been considering since Sunday. The NY Times Magazine published an article on Sunday about Dr. Anna Pou, who made the call to euthanize patients at a hospital in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The article is all at once fascinating and heart-wrenching. I can’t describe the range of emotions that it brought up. If you haven’t read it yet, skip this blog entry and click here.

A lot of the discussion surrounding this story (besides how well-written it is) is about the exorbitant price tag on it. It cost over $400,000 to produce.

And in a lot of ways it’s worth the price tag. The researchers uncovered information that had never before been reported.

The question that goes along with the price tag of course is how will newspapers continue to fund stories like this, in an age of free online content and downward ad revenue. Most newspapers simply can’t afford to fund an investigative report like this. And if stories like this don’t get printed, how will we find out?

I don’t know. And it makes me nervous quite honestly. Where would we be without “All the President's Men”?

I do think this article offers us hope though. It was largely funded by propublica.com, a non-profit “newsroom” devoted to funding investigative reporting.