Editor’s note: This is the first blog post where we are specifically highlighting an innovative project from another funding organization; let us know what you think in the comments. This post is from Gary Kebbel, Director of the Knight Journalism program.

More and more individuals and non-profit organizations are experimenting with new ways to bring important information to the public, using new digital tools or processes. One example is an experiment in getting the public to micro-fund investigative journalism, called Spot.us. Another new investigative reporting site, Pro Publica is relying on a large charitable contribution to fund top-notch professional investigative journalists to write stories that many daily newspapers no longer can afford to do. And now, the Kaiser Family Foundation has created Kaiser Health News, a new, nonprofit health policy news organization that will provide free health policy news content to for-profit and non-profit news organizations.

Kaiser Health News joins Spot.us and Pro Publica as experiments in how to fund serious journalism. Kaiser Health News is an experiment in niche journalism funded by an interested party, a foundation whose mission is to focus research and grants on the major health care issues facing the U.S. According to the foundation’s web site, KHN will be an ‘independent news service, to report on the nation’s complex health care system and the increasingly urgent political and policy debates surrounding it.’ To achieve that goal, journalists Laurie McGinley, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, and Peggy Girshman, now at Congressional Quarterly and formerly of NPR, have joined KHN.

What do you think about the Kaiser Health News experiment in niche journalism?