Investigative journalism takes time. How could one person do it alone, and distribute the stories with profit when they are ready?

"Return of the paperboy" is one of my Top 10 Media Innovation Ideas. I'm publishing one media innovation each day during the ten first days of October.

Only free newspapers (e.g. Metro) are delivered face to face in subway stations in Finland. However, modern phones and even the travel cards of the Helsinki inhabitants could be used to purchase quality magazines, or individual stories.

I'm proposing here a structure for investigative journalism, but the distribution channel could benefit various kinds of media operations.

In my idea one journalist uses her time to write and publish one story at a time. The story needs to be interesting to the wide public.

When the story is finished, it is printed on paper. The story could be, for example, 16 pages long. A small nfc chip and qr-code is included in the magazine. They are used to purchase the magazine, to comment the story on a dedicated blog (that doesn't publish the story, at least not during the same day. The blog is merely for comments) and to share the blog and story title on Facebook.

Junior league sports teams are used to sell the story at transport hubs. The publishing interval is not frequent nor set, so buyers never know when the next story will come out.

Readers buy the paper with their phones so that the sellers don't have to handle the money, only advertise the headline loudly like they did in London in the old days (I've seen this in the movies). They get a share of the total sale amount, the rest goes to the investigative journalist.

Required team:

• NFC person who knows about marketing
• Passionate journalist
• Junior league sports teams