ProPublica: doing well but can't fill the gaps in American investigative journalism

Posted by Emma Heald on April 24, 2009 at 3:23 PM

ProPublica general manager Richard Tofel said that the non-profit investigative journalism outlet cannot "save investigative reporting" in the US, reported Poynter. Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday, Tofel explained how the organisation could not possibly fill the gaps left by newsroom cutbacks across the country.

ProPublica has 30 reporters and offers its investigative stories to news outlets for nothing. Tofel stressed that the initiative has proved it can do major important work, such as a story earlier this month on medical care for US contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, published by the Los Angeles Times and broadcast by ABC News, which prompted a call for a congressional investigation. The site has also hired bloggers from Slate and Talking Points Memo to do three to six short stories a day, and Tofel said that its ChangeTracker and bailout blog produce interesting story ideas that other outlets could pursue.

The organisation's next big task, Tofel explained, is to come up with a sustainable revenue model. ProPublica was founded with a large donation from the Sandler Foundation and others, and has frequently been cited as an example of a successful non-profit in the new industry's eternal quest for a business model. Tofel believes that some kinds of journalism, just as investigative, "are revealing themselves to be public goods and need to be funded as such." The problem with government funding, however, is that "the nature of investigative reporting is to have an adversarial relationship with government." Regardless of who does fund investigative journalism, it is crucial that they have no influence over it, and if ProPublica can come up with a sustainable business model, all the better.

Source: Poynter