Attention Substackers: ProPublica Is Trying To Expand Its Local Reporting

Got some journalism chops? Here's how to hook up with ProPublica to improve your reach.

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ProPublica is one of the most important journalism sources in America. They’re not owned by oligarchs (at least, not directly) or major corporations. They subsist on donations.

Disclaimer: I have no relationship with ProPublica beyond being a loyal reader and, when possible, donator. I receive no affiliate type of money, or anything similar, for sharing this information.

ProPublica broke the Clarence Thomas corruption story that mainstream media reluctantly picked up later. They’re vital to preserving what is left of the Fourth Estate.

On that note, I’m reproducing, in its entirety, a newsletter I received from ProPublica today regarding an expansion to their Local Reporting Network.

If you’re a Substacker with journalism skills and/or a network of readers developed through your investigative reporting, you should check this out.

I’m not a journalist, I’m a fiction writer and frequent rant artist, so I won’t be doing this, but I know there are a few of you out there this may apply to. Or, if you know of a publication here on Substack that you think can benefit from this, please share it with them or restack this so they can see it.

First, I’ll include the full newsletter they sent me. After that is a little history of ProPublica, what they’re about, and just a few examples of what they’ve accomplished.

Here is their newsletter, verbatim, as sent to me:

Greetings from the Local Reporting Network!

We’re delighted to let you know that we have opened up a new call for proposals to select the next five partners in the Local Reporting Network. These newsrooms will be chosen as part of ProPublica’s 50 State Initiative, a commitment to partnering with one newsroom from each state by 2029.

The deadline for applications is April 14 at 5 p.m. Eastern time. Reporters selected for the one-year program will begin work on July 1, 2025.

Newsrooms from 40 states are eligible to apply for this round. (We cannot take applications from newsrooms in the 10 states where we selected a project in the first year of the initiative: Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee and Utah.)

We will be holding an informational webinar on March 5 at 1 p.m. Eastern time; please sign up to join us.

How does the LRN work?

Through this partnership, ProPublica will reimburse news organizations for the salary of the selected reporter (up to $75,000 plus a benefits stipend) so they can spend a year working full time on an accountability journalism project of importance to their communities. ProPublica also provides editing support, along with our data, research, visual storytelling, graphics, design, audience and engagement expertise.

As part of the 50 State Initiative, ProPublica is currently collaborating with newsrooms from 10 states. Reporting with The Connecticut Mirror on car towing in the state sparked a quick commitment from legislators to look at laws through which low-income residents were quickly losing their cars. In Maine, the Bangor Daily News has documented how a new program that intended to prevent evictions excluded those in public housing. And the North Dakota Monitor’s reporter found that the state’s ethics rules governing elected officials are significantly weaker than those in other states.

How can I get more information about applying?

We’re here to help!

Please check out our how to apply page, including the FAQs. That will give you a good grounding in the program (and there are examples of successful applications at the bottom of the page for you to look at).

If you still have questions about the program or would like some feedback on your topic, please email us at local.reporting@propublica.org. We will respond in writing and can also set up a call with an editor to discuss your idea.

Sign up for our informational webinar on March 5 at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

When you’re ready, you can find the application here.

We look forward to hearing from you,

Sarah Blustain
Assistant Managing Editor, Local
ProPublica

Who is ProPublica?

So who are these guys? Few outside of the close-knit journalist community have been paying much attention as ProPublica has quietly turned into an investigative juggernaut over the last 20 years or so.

The news outlet was started by a rich couple, Marion and Herb Sandler, who grew a small savings and loan operation in Oakland, California into a very, very large operation called Golden West Financial Corporation. How large? Big enough to sell to Wachovia for $25 billion. This laced their pockets with a $2.4 billion profit¹ that they didn’t really need. I mean, who does?

So, unlike other billionaires, instead of piling up more cash, they looked for ways to give it all away. They set up a foundation, called, of course, The Sandler Foundation, because even progressive billionaires have egos. They dumped $1.4 billion into it, which quickly made it one of the top 30 philanthropic organizations in the nation.

They also supported such charities as the American Asthma Foundation and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). Wikipedia, which knows these things, says CRL “is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization fighting predatory mortgage lending, payday loans, and other products that prey on consumers.”

According to the New York Times, the Sandlers also helped finance Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), which has consistently been a target of the right, which in turn means they’re good at what they do.

Herb Sandler has been quoted as saying that the motive for all this charity funding “starts with outrage. You go a little crazy when power takes advantage of those without power.”

But their biggest adventure happened when they met up with a journalist named Paul Steiger, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, and said, “Paul? We’d like to fire up an investigative news outlet because we’ve got some serious outrage going and we need to expose corruption and the abuse of power.”

They didn’t say it like that. That’s my summary. But that’s the essence of it.

Then they said, “We’ll give you $30 million to get it going.”

To a print journalist, that’s more gold than they’ll see in thirty lifetimes, much less one, so Steiger jumped on top of that faster than a Fox News reporter can jump into a pile of lies.

Steiger wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill managing editor. He had already won 16 Pulitzer prizes. Mainstream media has its obvious issues, but Pulitzers usually go to deserving journalists who report on things like, well, Supreme Court justices who fly around on jets provided by partisan donors.

Here’s a tip for the Pulitzer folks: The reporters for the ProPublica story about Thomas are Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski.

ProPublica has developed a long record of outstanding investigative journalism since those early days. Let’s fast forward to today. Here are a just a few of the amazing stories ProPublica has done in just the last year that you’ve never heard of:

As Facebook Abandons Fact-Checking, It’s Also Offering Bonuses for Viral Content
Meta decided to stop working with U.S. fact-checkers at the same time as it’s revamping a program to pay bonuses to creators with high engagement numbers, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts the company once policed.‌

The Powerful Forces Keeping High Interest Title Lending Alive in Georgia
In February, Georgia lawmaker Josh Bonner introduced a bill that he hoped would fix a thorny problem that entangles…

The Landlord, the Tenant and a House Fire in Milwaukee
Near Milwaukee, the lives of landlord Todd Brunner and tenant Angelica Belen intersect in a house that catches fire…

Juvenile Injustice, Tennessee
After a Nashville Public Radio and ProPublica investigation, a Tennessee judge said she was retiring.

The Secret IRS Files
A massive trove of tax information obtained by ProPublica, covering thousands of America's wealthiest individuals….

Cybersecurity Researcher Discovers Yet Another Flaw in Georgia’s Voter Cancellation Portal
The flaw would have allowed anyone to submit a voter registration cancellation request for any Georgian using their name, date of birth and county of residence — information that is easily discoverable online.

The list goes on and on and on because injustices in America are legion.

Not only is ProPublica the best major investigative news outlet in America,² but they also use a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to reproduce their stories in full. They even have a cool name for it: “Steal Our Stories.”

Much of ProPublica’s local reporting is done in concert with local news outlets. For example, the story of high-interest lending in Georgia was a cooperative effort with The Current, a news organization based in coastal Georgia.

This support from what is now a powerful force in American journalism helps local news journals stay afloat and do what American journalism is supposed to do: mind the store. Somebody needs to keep an eye on local politicians who keep their own eyes on graft.

Even better, they’re looking for you.

It’s a shame that we live in a country where we need rich fair-minded (or guilt-tripped) people like the Sandlers to counter the vast libertarian onslaught of corporate capitalism, but here we are.

Think for a minute about where we’d be without them. Then, subscribe to ProPublica’s newsletters so that you know there are people out there trying to keep us all sane.

Footnotes

1. It’s worth noting that this profit didn’t go unnoticed by some, and that, as often happens with anything involving the very rich, questions were asked. Was ProPublica the result of the world’s biggest guilt trip? Hey, maybe. But who cares, now? Herb is dead and his wife is ancient, even by my standards.

2. From a resource standpoint. It could be easily argued that there are Substack-based journalists who are as effective or more so.