Yahoo! News, traditionally known for its link aggregation and culling pieces from the AP wire, has slowly been expanding its original content in recent years. The site has a fairly robust blog presence  at this point, particularly in the political realm. Now, Yahoo News has decided to take things further and expand into documentary news. The site is producing a new weekly series called Remake America about six middle-class families trying to navigate America’s sagging, post-bubble economy.

“This puts us on a new track,” VP of Yahoo News and Finance Robertson Barrett tells AdWeek. “We’re looking to earn our return visitors.”

Barrett says in addition to the new series, Yahoo News will follow the model laid by Yahoo Sports–of enterprise reporting boosting by a roster of high-profile columnists. Former New York Times columnist Virginia Heffernan is apparently among the writers Yahoo will begin to trot out in the near future.

It all sounds great to us. Can’t argue with any effort to back original, high-quality reporting.