The launching of an investigative biz reporting group

Ben Steelman of the Wilmington Star-News in North Carolina writes Saturday about investigative business reporter Roddy Boyd‘s Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation.

Steelman writes, “Boyd followed that up by launching SIRF as a non-profit corporation with a board of directors including Christopher Roush, the director of business journalism at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Bloomberg News columnist William D. Cohan; former Fortune editor Bethany McLean; and financial writer Christopher Byron. Local lawyers and accountants are providing help, and an application for nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service is pending.

“At the moment, the staff consists of Boyd and one freelance editor. So far, the group has produced one report on the multi-level marketing giant ViSalus.

“All of the foundation’s work is based on what Boyd calls ‘algebraic journalism’: no anonymous sources, heavy use of government documents, corporate filings and number-crunching.

“‘The thing is, in the age of wireless Internet, you can do this sort of thing from a tree house,’ Boyd said recently. ‘You don’t have to be in New York.'”

Read more here.