Since ProPublica opened its doors in 2008, the organization's mission has become even more critical; our investigative stories have filled an even larger gap. Issues of inequality are among the most pressing in our society, and range across substantive fields. We find ourselves awash in opinions about these matters, but often starved for fresh or compelling facts of the sort that might prompt change. ProPublica believes that investigative reporting in the public interest on these matters has—and can—provide such facts in a way that strongly promotes civil rights and democratic governance. Many news organizations now view investigative journalism as an unaffordable luxury in tough economic times. According to a Pew report published in 2014, full-time professional newsroom employment declined another 6. 4% in 2012 with further losses expected from 2013. And while funding for new voices in journalism from philanthropists, venture capitalists and others is promising, it amounts to only a sliver of the budgets being cut. Those cuts continue to effect investigative reporting in an outsized way. We referred to this challenge in our 2014 annual report: “ProPublica had taken on stories most news organizations won't touch because they are too complex, too expensive, or too legally risky. We believe, however, that such work is critical to spurring accountability. " We believe that such work is critical to spurring accountability. History demonstrates that a vigilant press is an essential and effective weapon against private and public corruption. Contemporary social science has repeatedly shown that the existence of vibrant and independent journalism is a critical factor inhibiting abuse of power—and that in the absence of such watchdogs, the public interest suffers. In short, without a renewed and continuing societal commitment to investigative reporting, we cannot sustain the critical role the press plays in exposing corruption, especially of government and corporations, but also of other power centers. Filling this gap is imperative; failure to do so will cost us one of the most important checks and balances of our democracy. At present, there is no sign that either the blogosphere or new, for-profit media will do the job anytime soon. While many new online news organizations appear to place “monetizable" traffic above other values, ProPublica's commitment to and reputation for independent investigative reporting has earned our newsroom a position among the trusted news sources people rely on.

Each journalism project is published in a manner deemed by the editors at ProPublica to be likely to maximize the impact of the work, including through possible publishing partnerships with leading established news organizations and a bespoke, strategic plan for dissemination. This is the essence of ProPublica's publishing model. All of our work is displayed on our website, our mobile apps, our Facebook pages and through our Twitter feed. We also often distribute our biggest and deepest stories through one or more major media partners – print, television or radio, online, or a combination of them – carefully selected in each case to target key audiences and maximize the potential impact of our work. This process provides an objective assurance of quality, because partners are under no obligation to publish ProPublica's articles. It also gives the pieces much larger distribution and visibility than they would otherwise have. As a non-profit focused on journalism in the public interest, we are motivated to share the fruits of our work in ways that a profit-seeking publisher never would. Almost all our stories are available for reprint under a Creative Commons license.

ProPublica's founding in 2007-08 was a key milestone in the revival of non-profit journalism in the public interest in this country. Since that time, ProPublica reporting has sparked impact across a wide range of issues and locales, and has been honored with three Pulitzer Prizes, a Peabody Award, two Emmys and three Online News Association Awards for General Excellence. In 2014, ProPublica was honored to be named a recipient of one of the MacArthur Foundation's Awards for Creative and Effective Institutions, generally regarded as the institutional equivalent of MacArthur's “genius" award. Our major stories are almost always offered for free to publishing partners with whose audience we can have the greatest impact. Since 2008, we have worked with 139 partners, in print, on television, on radio and online, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR News, Frontline, the Atlantic, This American Life, the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, Consumer Reports, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New Yorker. Our newsroom includes 45 full-time journalists with a wide range of background and experience. Members of our staff have won virtually every major journalism award. Some of the team have decades of experience in newspaper reporting and are among the top journalists on their beats and as editors; others are at the cutting edge of new techniques that are leading the way in uncovering and communicating important information in the evolving ecosystem of journalism.

Each reporting project is carefully tracked to measure its impact, that is, its satisfaction of ProPublica's mission to use “the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing. " Any such impact will be reported publicly through ProPublica's thrice-annual reports to stakeholders. In ProPublica's own view it is actual change that marks our work as successful. In addition to tracking these outcomes, ProPublica will also carefully track outputs, including stories published, shared, republished or linked, and audiences reached, partners and readers engaged, supporting communications activities such as interviews. Short of impact (as we define it), increasing engagement or awareness can, of course, be valuable—and can also contribute to the likelihood of change (which can frequently take some time).

The most important measure of ProPublica's success is whether our work is having impact. We are diligent in reviewing how resources are spent, assessing the impact of our work, and reviewing how we might have achieved greater impact. Examples of what we mean, and discussions of how we think about the subject of impact, can be found at http://www. propublica. org/about/impact/.