KPLU 88.5 -- the National Public Radio affiliate in Seattle and Tacoma -- is among the dozen stations participating in an ambitious experiment to help transform online news. The effort -- known internally at NPR as Project Argo and bankrolled with $3 million from The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Knight Foundation-- is set to launch this summer, PaidContent reports.

The idea is to create original content, with each of the stations focusing on a highly-targeted niche such as immigration or the environment. Those topic areas have yet to be set for each station, though paidContent notes that efforts will ramp up in 2010 with the hiring of "reporter-bloggers."

Part of the goal of the project is to replace some of the content which is lost when daily newspapers go away. That erosion of journalism has hit Seattle, with the Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer earlier this year shutting down print production and laying off dozens of experienced beat reporters.

It will be interesting to see how this concept unfolds, and as practicing journalists we're hopeful that NPR or others will help lead the way in doing high-quality work in the field.

More on the project -- which is also funneling money and resources to stations in San Francisco, Oregon and Minnesota -- from this Current.org story.

Meanwhile, speaking of the future of news, Hearst Corp. executive Steve Schwartz yesterday sent a year-end message to employees, noting that "our efforts at transformation have just begun."

"The world becomes more digital every day, and so must we," wrote Schwartz, citing the news aggregation site LMK and the desire to set up niche content sites around topics such as the oil and gas industry in Texas. Schwartz also made reference to the Skiff, the company's push to compete with Amazon.com's Kindle.