Yes. I've kinda done it once, back before it was called "blogging." It was a story on activist efforts to protest a big dam project in Western India. Maybe not Pulitzer worthy, but decent enough. This was more than 10 years ago, and my writing has hopefully improved much since then, so don't judge it too harshly.

http://vgr.sulekha.com/blog/post...

The main problem with investigative stories is that you need to actually invest some money or more time than you can spare on the side. In my case, I partly paid for a 4 day trip myself, used up several vacation days, went to out-of-the-way places and hunted down hard-to-find people to talk to.

The 2-part piece was very well received, but I wouldn't do it again without some sort of idea about how to make it pay.

Pro-journalists like to pretend there's some kind of special training involved. That's basically bs. All it takes is basic scientific-minded research skills (which many professions teach), basic intelligence and the energy to go around chasing people, facts and numbers.

I decided that was not the direction I wanted to develop my writing, but I learned enough to realize that I could, no problem.

I'd say most intelligent information workers with any kind of research experience, decent writing skills and a bit of boldness, could do it.

As for the wikileaks model, I am a bit of a skeptic. To get to the real interesting stuff, at some point somebody has to get off their computer and travel, look at real-world stuff, interrogate people face to face so you can tell if they are feeding you a line etc.