The Associated Press announced Friday that it had entered into a partnership with four non-profit investigative journalism organizations to distribute their work to more than 1,500 American newspapers who are AP members.

As I commented Friday over at Science Journalism Tracker, the model developed in investigative journalism offers a blueprint for similar non-profit initiatives in science and environmental journalism. The announcement by the AP demonstrates the potential for non-profit ventures to reach a large audience while filling in a major gap in existing coverage at regional and local newspapers.