Muckrakers with Chinese characteristics

Investigative journalism in China has taken a new twist as victims of corruption and other official misdoings can hire muckrakers online, writes the Washington Post. (h/t China Digital Times). The story goes to Qinglong where farmers were successful in dealing with local corrupt officials.

"Of course, we were very happy to hear the news," said Shuai Changqing, one of the farmers who led the fight against local officials.
The farmers, it turned out, had more than a small role in making the news. One of their own had hired Xu as a reporter, for a negotiated fee of $265.
What happened here in Qinglong was typical of a new kind of journalism that is emerging in response to the Chinese Communist Party's suffocating censorship of newspapers, radio and television. With no more investment than a computer and a taste for taking risks, several dozen Web-based investigative journalists have set up sites and started advertising their willingness -- for a price -- to look into scandals
that traditional reporters cannot touch.

Journalists who were confronted with the censorship in their own media have been publishing their blocked stories more often on the internet, but this is the first time it turns into a business model. Returns are modest, as might be expected, since most of the victims do not have much money to spare.