First Hummel Report Airs

Jim Hummel, who left his post as investigative reporter with ABC6 last year, has posted his first TV-on-the-web piece for his new non-profit Hummel Report.

The story, which focuses on a police officer who has been on paid leave for 13 years, costing the city of Woonsocket some $1 million in pay, benefits and litigation, picks up where the reporter left off - exposing government waste.

No real evidence in the piece of the conservative bias that some feared when Hummel teamed up with right-leaning talk radio station WPRO and conservative think tank Ocean State Policy Research Institute to launch the project - though a lengthy list Rhode Island news story links includes a piece from the conservative Goldwater Institute.

Hummel's police story, in line with the "You Paid For It" segments he was known for at ABC6, suggests the reporter is still on his game. But the medium is clearly different - the video quality is not that of television, a link to a municipal contract at the heart of the story appears broken.

Non-profit journalism, at least at present, cannot draw on the resources of the for-profit model. But the experiment is, undoubtedly, an interesting one.