In California, two new reporting startups will pay the salaries of “more than dozens” of journalists and pay up to 120 Berkeley grad students for their work.

Financier Warren Hellman is investing $5 million in an as-yet-unnamed nonprofit journalism venture that will launch next year and cover politics, social issues, and education. That site will employ “dozens” of journalists, use content from and provide content to NorCal’s public radio station KQED, and pay Berkeley grad students.

And the Center for Investigative Reporting’s newly-launched California Watch employs an editorial team of eight, in addition to managers and directors.

This may be outside the norm, the Wall Street Journal and The Business Insider report, as new business starts are actually down per the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent reports. And venture capital funding was down 44% in the first half of 2009.

After the last recession officially ended in November 2001, it took about a year and a half before folks began launching startups again. So while everyone’s talking about how small businesses create jobs, remember that you have to have the small business before it can create anything.