No Charity, No Investigative Reporting

The profit collapse in the American news industry, particularly at large metropolitan daily newspapers, is creating a crisis for American democracy. As advertising shrinks and flees to the Internet, newsrooms have cut staff in order to curb costs. In turn, this constrains their ability to mount the investigative and accountability reporting that for decades served as a check on corruption and abuse of power.

This has created the role for "ProPublica", the non-profit, non-partisan newsroom that I head.  Our mission is 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. We seek to shine a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.