ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism outlet, has won a Pulitzer Prize four times and been named a finalist nine times in its decade-long existence.
The outfit has become known for the type of research-heavy investigative projects that many news organizations have moved away from in recent years because of their immense time and cost: series looking at the United States’ high maternal death rates, children confined in psychiatric hospitals, bouts of PTSD among police officers and firefighters, and, just this week, how the working poor are increasingly more likely to face IRS audits than the rich.
The nonprofit organization, which is funded by donors, does not complement these pieces with the type of catty, click-on-me journalism that so many are critical of the media for, nor does it publish opinion pieces. Instead it sticks to a mission to “expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”
