HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a
nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
based in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...
'', April 13, 2010
Pulitzer progress for non-profit news
ProPublica
Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting: Deadly Choices at Memorial
and published in ''
The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'' Sheri Fink, ''
New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'', August 25, 2009
The Deadly Choices at Memorial
as well as on ProPublica.org.ProPublica, August 27, 2009
The Deadly Choices at Memorial
ProPublica states that its investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative 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 it has won six Pulitzer Prizes.


History

ProPublica was the brainchild of
Herbert Herbert may refer to: People Individuals * Herbert (musician), a pseudonym of Matthew Herbert Name * Herbert (given name) * Herbert (surname) Places Antarctica * Herbert Mountains, Coats Land * Herbert Sound, Graham Land Australia * Herbert, ...
and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the
Golden West Financial Corporation Golden West Financial was the second-largest savings and loan association in the United States, operating branches under the name of World Savings Bank. History The business was founded in 1929 as Golden West Savings and Loan Association, a smal ...
, who have committed $10 million a year to the project. The Sandlers hired Paul Steiger, former managing editor of ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', to create and run the organization as editor in chief. At the time ProPublica was set up, Steiger responded to concerns about the role of the political views of the Sandlers, saying on ''
The Newshour with Jim Lehrer ''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS member stations. It airs seven nights a week, and is known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events. Anchored by Judy Woodruff, the pro ...
'': 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 was reported to have received 850 applications upon ProPublica's announcement. The organization appointed a 12-member advisory board of professional journalists. The newsgroup shares its work under the
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has releas ...
no-derivative, non-commercial license. On August 5, 2015,
Yelp Yelp Inc. is an American company that develops the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. It is headquartered in San F ...
announced a partnership with the company to help improve their healthcare statistics.


Funding

While the Sandler Foundation provided ProPublica with significant financial support, it also has received funding from the
Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts. The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...
, MacArthur Foundation,
Pew Charitable Trusts The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent ...
,
Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the dea ...
, 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. In like manner, Alberto Ibarguen, the president and CEO of the Knight Foundation is on the board of ProPublica. ProPublica has attracted attention for the salaries it pays its 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 ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', where his total compensation (including
options Option or Options may refer to: Computing *Option key, a key on Apple computer keyboards *Option type, a polymorphic data type in programming languages * Command-line option, an optional parameter to a command *OPTIONS, an HTTP request method ...
) 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 made more than $160,000, including managing editor Stephen Engelberg ($343,463) and the highest-paid reporter, Dafna Linzer, formerly of the ''Washington Post'' ($205,445). Engelberg is a former ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' editor who co-wrote the non-fiction book '' Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War'', with ''Times'' reporter Judith Miller.


Awards

In 2010, ProPublica jointly won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting (it also was awarded to another news organization for a different story) for "The Deadly Choices at Memorial", "a story that 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." It was written by ProPublica's Sheri Fink and published in ''
The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'' as well as on ProPublica.org. This was the first Pulitzer awarded to an online news source. The article also won the 2010 National Magazine Award for Reporting. 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 was awarded to a group of stories not published in print. In 2016, ProPublica won its third Pulitzer Prize, this time for Explanatory Reporting, in collaboration with
The Marshall Project The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, online journalism organization focusing on issues related to criminal justice in the United States. It was founded by former hedge fund manager Neil Barsky with former '' New York Times'' executive editor B ...
for "a startling examination and exposé of
law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term ...
'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 The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest i ...
. In 2019,
Peabody Awards The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
honored ProPublica with the first-ever Peabody Catalyst Award 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 The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been awarded since 1979 for a distinguished example of feature writing giving prime consideration to high lit ...
for her series that followed immigrants on Long Island whose lives were shattered by a botched crackdown on
MS-13 Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Ang ...
. In May 2020, ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize in public service for illuminating public safety gaps in
Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S ...
. In that same year, ProPublica also won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
and the collisions of the
USS Fitzgerald USS ''Fitzgerald'' (DDG-62), named for United States Navy officer Lieutenant William Charles Fitzgerald, is an in the US Navy. In the early morning hours of 17 June 2017, the ship was involved in a collision with the container ship , seriousl ...
and USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) with civilian vessels in separate incidents in the western Pacific. The stories were written by T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi.


Notable reporting and projects


"An Unbelievable Story of Rape"

T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of
The Marshall Project The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, online journalism organization focusing on issues related to criminal justice in the United States. It was founded by former hedge fund manager Neil Barsky with former '' New York Times'' executive editor B ...
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 Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...
series '' Unbelievable''.


IRS and conservative groups

In December 2012 and January 2013, ProPublica published and reported on confidential pending applications for groups requesting tax-exempt status. In May 2013, after widespread coverage of allegations that the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, ProPublica clarified that it obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, writing, "In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public." ProPublica reported on six of them, after deeming information within those applications newsworthy.IRS Office That Targeted Tea Party Also Disclosed Confidential Docs From Conservative Groups
, Kim Barker and Justin Elliott, ProPublica, May 13, 2013


Psychiatric Solutions

ProPublica conducted a large-scale, circumscribed investigation on
Psychiatric Solutions Psychiatric Solutions, Inc. was an operator of psychiatric facilities in the United States. They were bought out by Universal Health Services. Joey Jacobs and Bryce DeHaven, former executives of Hospital Corporation of America for over 20 year ...
, a company based in Tennessee that buys failing hospitals, cuts staff, and accumulates profit. The report covered patient deaths at numerous Psychiatric Solutions facilities, the failing physical plant at many of their facilities, and covered the
State of Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to th ...
's first closure of
Manatee Palms Youth Services Suncoast Behavioral Health Center, formerly known as Manatee Palms Youth Services, is a 60-bed psychiatric hospital in Bradenton, Florida. Manatee Palms was a subsidiary of for-profit Psychiatric Solutions. The license for Suncoast Behavioral He ...
, which has since been shut down by Florida officials once again. Their report was published in conjunction with the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
''.


Documenting Hate

In 2017, ProPublica launched the Documenting Hate project for systematic tracking of hate crimes and bias incidents. The project is part of their Civil Rights beat, and allows victims or witnesses of hate crime incidents to submit stories. The project also allows journalists and newsrooms to partner with ProPublica to write stories based on the dataset they are collecting. For example, the Minneapolis '' Star Tribune'' partnered with ProPublica to write about reporting of hate crimes in Minnesota.


Surgeon Scorecard

In 2015, ProPublica launched Surgeon Scorecard, an interactive database that allows users to view complication rates for eight common elective procedures. The tool allows users to find surgeons and hospitals, and see their complication rates. The database was controversial, drawing criticism from doctors and prompting a critique from RAND. However, statisticians, including Andrew Gelman, stood behind their decision to attempt to shine light on an opaque aspect of the medical field, and ProPublica offered specific rebuttals to RAND's claims.


Tracking evictions and rent stabilization in New York City

ProPublica has created an interactive map that allows people to search for addresses in New York City to see the effects of eviction cases. The app was nominated for a Livingston Award.


Taxes paid by wealthiest Americans

In June 2021, after receiving leaked, hacked, or stolen IRS documents, ProPublica published a report which showed that tax rates for the wealthiest Americans were significantly lower than the average middle class tax rate, when considering unrealized
capital gains Capital gain is an economic concept defined as the profit earned on the sale of an asset which has increased in value over the holding period. An asset may include tangible property, a car, a business, or intangible property such as shares ...
as being equivalent to earned income. ProPublica would later reveal that technology investor and political donor Peter Thiel legally earned over $5 billion in a tax-free Roth IRA account through his investments in private companies. On June 9, Attorney General Merrick Garland told lawmakers that investigating the source of the release would be a top priority for the Justice Department.


Board members

File:Danielle Allen 2017.jpg, upright=0.5, Harvard University Professor Danielle Susan Allen File:Henry Louis Gates (14305391283) (cropped).jpg, upright=0.5, Public academic Henry Louis Gates Jr. File:Paul Sagan.jpg, upright=0.5, Businessman Paul Sagan File:JMS Portrait.jpg, upright=0.5, Business executive James M. Stone File:Donald Sussman.jpg, upright=0.5, Asset manager and philanthropist Donald Sussman


Criticism

ProPublica, along with other major news outlets, received grant funding from Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange
FTX FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX (short for "Futures Exchange") is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. The exchange was founded in 2019 and, at its peak in July 2021, had over one mi ...
, who was subsequently arrested for fraud. ''Reason'' argues the stronger claim that Bankman-Fried encouraged the media to support left-leaning perspectives, but subsequent reporting suggests that Bankman-Fried's political position did not have a clean partisan slant; see


See also

*


References


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Propublica 2007 establishments in New York City 501(c)(3) organizations American journalism organizations American news websites Crowdfunded journalism Investigative journalism Non-profit organizations based in New York City Organizations based in Manhattan Organizations established in 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service winners Tor onion services Nonprofit newspapers