The Sharesleuth.com Experiment isn't Working

Sharesleuth.com, Mark Cuban's investigative journalism website, had its first update after three months on Wednesday.

The site started about a year ago to offer "independent Web-based reporting aimed at exposing securities fraud and corporate chicanery." I was pretty intrigued then and have been a regular visitor to the site--well as regular as a site that updates once in three months can have.

The most interesting thing about Sharesleuth.com was its editor and sole reporter, Chris Carey, positioned it as a new-media investigation journalism venture, while suggesting that the site's patron, Cuban, would be shorting stocks to benefit from the stories on the site.

That seemed like an outrageous conflict of interest to me. But over the year, Sharesleuth.com did just three stories and at least two were a huge yawn. The articles were dry, and rather dull.

Now Gary Weiss has a post pointing out that Cuban's short efforts based on Sharesleuth.com stories aren't working out either.

I think the Sharesleuth.com experiment is dead and its time to acknowledge that.

I would love to hear Chris Carey's perspective on what he thinks of the venture and how it has worked out so far compared to his expectations.