In a piece that aired on Tuesday's edition of the National Public Radio program "All Things Considered," journalism school director Geneva Overholser (pictured) praised the work of online news organizations such as VoiceofSanDiego.org, which earned an investigative reporting award for a series of stories uncovering corruption in the city's redevelopment agencies.

VoiceofSanDiego.org represents a growing trend in news coverage online, the story stated, with similar outlets in Minneapolis/St. Paul and St. Louis.

"These web-based organizations are, I think, filling a very important niche," Overholser said.

Overholser said the best way for these sites to stand out is to focus their journalism on stories in their local community that larger, more established media organizations may be missing.

"Many of them are focusing on kind of digging investigative reporting, kind of watchdog reporting. And to me, that is probably the single most important thing they could focus on," she said.

Overholser also warned that while online investigative reporting is enjoying a surge of popularity, the organizations that support those reporting efforts are going to face the same economic realities as "legacy newsrooms," or traditional print and broadcast outlets.

"One problem they all confront is that we have essentially trained Americans to believe that the information they need is going to flow to them without their needing to pay for it," she said.

The story aired previously on KPCC-FM's "The California Report."

Before she was appointed director of USC Annenberg's School of Journalism in 2008, Overholser held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism. She was editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995, leading the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1991. She is also the author of "On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change," an essay that called upon the industry to examine long-held assumptions in the face of an uncertain future.

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