Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is the sole investor in a new website devoted to investigative business journalism that will be run by a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch business journalist.
In an e-mail, Christopher Carey tells me that he’s leaving the Post-Dispatch at the end of this week to launch a new investigative business journalism site, Sharesleuth.com, devoted to exposing stock fraud and corporate malfeasance.
He’s doing this in partnership with billionaire entrepreneur Cuban, whose holdings include the Mavericks of the National Basketball Association, HDNet, HDNet Films, Magnolia Pictures, 2929 Productions and the Landmark Theatres chain.
The blog-style news site will feature Carey’s reporting, aided by stringers and a global network of amateur researchers. They’re going to spotlight questionable companies and activities, and dig deeply into the people and tales behind them.
Says Carey: “I’m already writing the first few stories, which will look at dubious public companies with ties to recidivist securities-law violators. Plus, I’ve got plenty more to write about the global boiler rooms and their U.S. ties. Over time, I’d like to hunt bigger game. As a general proposition, we’re considering anything and everything as subject material. It might be a little bit trial-and-error at first, trying to determine what draws readers and what has the most potential to generate revenue.”
And here’s the good part — they’re going to take a multimedia approach, using the Web, Cuban’s television network and his movie-production capabilities. HDNet Films was one of two production companies behind the documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” which came out last year.
Carey says he hooked up with Cuban through an e-mail he sent to him after he read something Cuban had posted on his own blog. “We took it from there, hashing out a plan over the past few months,” said Carey.
Carey has been a business reporter for more than two decades, at the Post-Dispatch, the Indianapolis Star, the Orlando Sentinel and the Messenger-Inquirer in Owensboro, Ky. He was a finalist for a Gerald Loeb Award in 2005 for a series on global stock fraud and spent the 2005-06 academic year studying the criminal subculture in the securities industry’ as a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan.
Carey, 45, is a native of Ames, Iowa. He graduated from Indiana University in 1983, with a double major in journalism and economics.
