Outlet profile

ProPublica

U.S. center-left

Owned byIndependent 501(c)(3) nonprofit; no corporate or individual owner. Governed by its own board of directors.

FundingPhilanthropic donations and grants, not advertising or subscriptions. Major funders have included the Sandler Foundation (its founding funder), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and other foundations and individual donors, supplemented by licensing its stories to other outlets for free republication.

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

ProPublica launched in 2008 in New York, founded by former Wall Street Journal editors Paul Steiger, Stephen Engelberg, and Richard Tofel, with seed funding from Herbert and Marion Sandler. It was created to fill a gap left by shrinking newspaper investigative teams, publishing its work free for other outlets to republish. It has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, including for investigations into medical care after Hurricane Katrina, Wall Street practices, and, in 2026, the Trump administration's freeze of USAID humanitarian funding. It has also faced criticism, mostly from conservative commentators and outlets, over its 2021 IRS-leak-based series on wealthy Americans' tax practices, which relied on illegally obtained tax records. Its investigative targets span both parties, having also scrutinized Biden-era agencies and Democratic officials, but its recent output has skewed toward scrutiny of Trump administration officials, deregulation, and immigration enforcement. It has no ownership stake for any individual donor, and its board includes several finance and media figures.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-09-25; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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