Citing job losses at the Guardian and industry speculation over the future of the Independent newspaper, Fielding, who edits the Circling the Lion's Den site, said 'very little serious investigative journalism is going on' in the UK.
Fielding, who was formerly a senior journalist at the Sunday Times, will meet other leading investigative journalists this week to continue discussions on a new British investigative journalism body, which could be built on foundation funding.
Nick Davies has spoken about possible 'mini-media' structures in the past; other journalists involved in the meetings include Stephen Grey and David Leigh.
A minority of newspaper articles come from original investigation, Fielding said, claiming that 80 per cent comes from the wires, 15 per cent 'from interested parties', leaving 5 per cent of copy ideas generated in-house.
Fellow speaker Andrew Miller, political editor for the Economist, said current libel law is the main challenge to investigative journalism in the UK, with high legal costs prohibiting newspapers from pursuing serious investigations.
Discussing the methods he used to unearth stories in his own years as a foreign correspondent in Russia, Miller said he is 'skeptical' over whether that kind of journalism can continue in the current mainstream media climate.
Also at the event, Andrew Sparrow, senior political correspondent for the Guardian, said he doubted there is sufficient popular interest in serious investigations.
"People buy the package (...) The popular stuff subsidises the less popular stuff," he said.
It is 'commercially very difficult to sustain that kind of [investigative] work', added Sparrow.
"Let's assume in five years time, there may be a lot less national newspapers. They will be producing a much thinner kind of news," Fielding added.
Panelist Faisal Abbas, a blogger for the Huffington Post, and editor of the Asharq Al Awsat media supplement, reminded the audience that 'the key product isn't the paper itself'.
"It's the quality of the journalism, it's the content (...) We have to convince ourselves there will always be demand for quality content," he said.
@journalism_live reported live at the Voices Online Blogging conference 2009.
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