ProPublica
ProPublica, Inc., is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City. ProPublica's investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won several Pulitzer Prizes.
In 2010, ProPublica became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize; the story chronicled the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital's exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and it was published both in the New York Times Magazine and on ProPublica's website.
History
ProPublica was the brainchild of Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation, who committed $10 million per year to the project. The Sandlers hired Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to create and run the organization as editor in chief.At the time ProPublica was set up, Steiger responded to concerns about the impact of the left-leaning political views of the Sandlers, saying on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer:
ProPublica had an initial news staff of 28 reporters and editors, including Pulitzer Prize winners Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber, Jeff Gerth, and Marcus Stern. Steiger is reported to have received 850 applications after ProPublica's announcement. The organization appointed a 12-member advisory board of professional journalists.
The newsgroup shares its work under the Creative Commons no-derivative, non-commercial license.
On August 5, 2015, Yelp announced a partnership with ProPublica to bring improved healthcare data into Yelp's statistics on healthcare providers.
Funding
While ProPublica has received significant financial support from the Sandler Foundation, it also has received funding from the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. ProPublica and the Knight Foundation have various connections. For example, Paul Steiger, executive chairman of ProPublica, is a trustee of the Knight Foundation. Similarly, Alberto Ibarguen, the president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, is on the board of ProPublica. ProPublica, along with other major news outlets, received grant funding from Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.ProPublica has attracted attention for the salaries it pays employees. In 2008, Paul Steiger, the editor of ProPublica, received a salary of $570,000. Steiger was formerly the managing editor at The Wall Street Journal, where his total compensation was double that at ProPublica. Steiger's stated strategy is to use a Wall Street Journal pay model to attract journalistic talent. In 2010, eight ProPublica employees earned more than $160,000, including managing editor Stephen Engelberg and the highest-paid reporter, Dafna Linzer, formerly of the Washington Post.
Awards
In 2010, ProPublica jointly won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for the story "The Deadly Choices at Memorial"; this "chronicles the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital's exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina." The story was written by ProPublica's Sheri Fink, and it was published in The New York Times Magazine as well as on the ProPublica website. This was the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to an online news source. The article also won the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2010.In 2011, ProPublica won its second Pulitzer Prize. Reporters Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their series, The Wall Street Money Machine. This was the first time a Pulitzer Prize was awarded to a group of stories not published in print.
In 2016, ProPublica won its third Pulitzer Prize, this one for Explanatory Reporting—in collaboration with The Marshall Project for "a startling examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims."
In 2017, ProPublica and the New York Daily News were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of reports on the use of eviction rules by the New York City Police Department.
In 2019, the Peabody Awards honored ProPublica with the first-ever Peabody Catalyst Award; this was for releasing audio in 2018 that brought immediate change to a controversial government practice of family separation at the southern border.
Also in 2019, ProPublica reporter Hannah Dreier was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing; this was for her series that followed immigrants on Long Island whose lives were shattered by a botched crackdown on MS-13.
In May 2020, ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for illuminating public safety gaps in Alaska.
In that same year, ProPublica also won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting; this prize was for coverage of the United States Navy, in particular the collisions of the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain with civilian vessels in separate incidents in the western Pacific Ocean. The stories were written by T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi.
In 2021 and 2022, ProPublica journalists Lisa Song and Mark Olalde won SEAL Awards for consistent excellence in environmental reporting.
In May 2024, ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, for reporting on the billionaires who were giving gifts to the US Supreme Court's justices and paying their travel expenses. The stories were written by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski and Kirsten Berg.
In July 2024, Mary Hudetz was presented with the Richard LaCourse Award for Investigative Journalism by the Indigenous Journalists Association for her work on ProPublica’s "The Repatriation Project." Her reporting, which focused on the complexities and obstacles in repatriating Native American remains and sacred objects from museums and universities, "had rippling effects at the institutional level down to Indigenous communities and peoples".
Notable reporting and projects
"An Unbelievable Story of Rape"
of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project collaborated on this piece about the process that discovered a serial rapist in Colorado and Washington state. The piece won a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. This piece was adapted into the 2019 Netflix series Unbelievable.Bias with COMPAS software
In 2016, ProPublica published an investigation of the COMPAS algorithm used by U.S. courts to assess the likelihood of a defendant becoming a recidivist. Led by Julia Angwin, the investigation found that "blacks are almost twice as likely as whites to be labeled a higher risk but not actually re-offend," whereas COMPAS "makes the opposite mistake among whites: They are much more likely than blacks to be labeled lower-risk but go on to commit other crimes." They also found that only 20 percent of people predicted to commit violent crimes actually went on to do so.COMPAS developer Northpointe criticized ProPublica’s methodology, while a team at the Community Resources for Justice, a criminal justice think tank, published a rebuttal of the investigation's findings.