small paper in Wisconsin than his stints at Bloomberg News and The Seattle Times.

In a telephone interview, he said he files two or three stories a day for Xconomy, a pattern that secures his standing with sources as a guy who's not only paying attention to what they're doing and saying -- but publishing it quickly.

He acknowledges that Xconomy does not invest as much time as he enjoyed as an investigative reporter at The Seattle Times, where he once spent four months on a story.

"The idea of that one big Sunday narrative piece that says let's not worry about every turn of the screw ... makes for a well-written and edited publication," he said, "but it creates a distance between the newspaper and a lot of the institutionsstory. "Sometimes we'll see 80 percent of the readers getting to the fifth page," he said.

Xconomy pushes for innovation on the commercial side as well, pitching advertisers on 12-month deals that involve local promotional events as well as conventional tile advertising on the site (and avoid the need for all those repeat sales calls). He said those deals range from several thousand dollars a year to six figures, depending on the market and services provided.

Buderi said the site resists the temptation afflicting some niche publications to lower the wall between advertising and news, insisting that Xconomy's ethics guidelines preserve the integrity of its content.

Foundation support as a PR expense

The financial assistance provided by Kauffman is interesting on several levels. Some news startups are considering the so-called low-profit model