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Thank you for your answer.

[...] we work predominantly with journalists already employed by media outlets in their own country. So we don't pay their salary [...]

Considering that employers (and not the employee) gets the last say in what gets published it does detract from what you said earlier:

ICIJ does not take money from USAID or any US government agency. We are open about our funders (including our funding from the Open Society Foundation, which was founded by George Soros), who have absolutely no control over our editorial output - which is exactly why they fund us! They are supporting completely independent journalism. -Hamish

So the organizations funding ICIJ does not have any control over editorial output. That's great. But all editorial output is still under scrutiny from employers at media outlets. So the usual media criticism still applies (e.g Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky).

Since I am still curios about what kind of money journalists make I did some digging myself. The Danish journalists working with ICIJ are employed by either DR or JP/Politiken. So just out of curiosity I looked up the total wage expenses and the total (average) number of employees at JP/Politken in 2017. They spent 723,872,000 DKK (~97.2 mil. EUR) on wages 19,322,000 DKK (~2.6 mil. EUR) of which went to the board and the executives. So that leaves 704,550,000 DKK (~94.6 mil. EUR) for journalists and other non-executive employees. They had a total (average) of 1180 employees. That's an average yearly salary per employee of 597,076.27 DKK (80,153 EUR) and a monthly salary of 49,756.36 DKK (6,679 EUR). Source: JP/Politken Yearly Report 2017, page 17. If we input that into https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/interaktiv-grafik-hvor-mange-tjener-mindre-end-dig we see that someone making the avarge JP/Politken salary earns more than 90% of the population of Denmark.

Looking at the coverage that Politken has done on the Panama Papers they seem more preoccupied with defending rich people and politicians than criticizing tax evasion and helping put forward demands for a different system. I personally feel the journalist are closer to the politicians and the rich people (who are able to benefit from tax evasion) than they are to the rest of the population (who do not benefit from tax evasion).

I know the AmA is over so I will probably not get an answer to this. But I can't keep but wondering what makes you work with these kind of journalists? Why isn't this material published in reader-owned or community-owned media outlets? Why isn't this material (the Panamar Papers and Paradise Papers and so on) available to "regular" people who are not top-earners? Or is this just the case in Denmark? If so, can you point me to articles that have been published by "regular" people in media outlets that do not have to answer to their rich owners or their wealthy advertisers?

EDIT: Minor. Spelling and clarification.

How much money do you make a year as journalists? What's your yearly salary at the newspapers/news agencies that employ you?