Categories: OLD Media Moves

Investigative biz journalism web site to start

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.

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View Comments

Virginia Gilbert says:
June 14, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Way to go Chris! Cuban couldn't ask for a better muckraker.
Charles says:
July 12, 2006 at 1:34 pm
How about GOVERNMENT malfeasance? Govt. commits more corrupt/illegal acts and steals more money in a DAY than ALL companies combined do in a YEAR.
Peter Luria , Esq. says:
July 12, 2006 at 1:41 pm
I am an attorney some of whose practice involves representing defrauded investors. Have you considered running an article about how the United States Supreme Court has beginning in 1988 and continuing through 1995 gutted the federal securities laws which were designed to protect investors?
Bill Anderson says:
July 12, 2006 at 4:25 pm
As this effort becomes established and gains currency I'm hoping there will be space for labor news, particularly to the extent that labor's issues serve as counterpoint to the short-sighted actions of ethically bankrupt corporate leaders who have no compunction about exploiting the law at the expense of democracy.
O. Gail Poole says:
July 12, 2006 at 10:43 pm
On your investigative reporting, I have a duzzie for you.
In Oklahoma City, the City and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation are going to re-route a portion of I-40, for 4.3 miles (at a cost of $500 million) right through the railyard of the Union Station at a time when the City and the state is in dire need of an alternate transportation system. It will be 10 lanes of depressed highway displacing 11 rail tracks at a cost of better than $100 million per mile and destroying an irreplaceable multi-modal transportation center for the profit of a few wealthy individuals.
Sam Emery says:
July 13, 2006 at 1:58 am
It's time for a news outlet to investigate the bioengineered foods that Americans have been eating since the 80's. We were never informed; never asked for permission. These foods are not labeled as bioengineered.
The rest of the world is allowed to know about this, and such foods are labeled. Their citizens can accept or reject such products.
Only a corporate run government and society would allow this situation.
Helen Norton says:
July 14, 2006 at 4:31 pm
FINALLY!!!! But please let us have more reporting of government malfeasance. This is worse than corporate wrongdoing. After all, shouldn't the government be setting an ethics standard for all?
Norm Cimon says:
July 17, 2006 at 11:38 pm
The interface between business and government is the interesting place, really. That's where money is used to put elected officials at the beck and call of those with the dough. Staffers just carry the water for this on-going corruption of our politics, often seething at being forced into a role they never imagined. The better ones - those with real integrity - blow the whistle and are often forced out, to the detriment of the public.