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Key links:
Primary website:
publicintegrity.org
Primary Twitter:
@publici

Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit news organization based in Washington, D.C., that produces investigative journalism on public-interest issues.

The center was founded by Charles Lewis in 1989, who was its director until 2005. Its staff has fluctuated between 25 to more than 50 throughout the 2000s and 2010s; most recently, it laid off 14 staff members in 2011. It is funded by a variety of grants and donations, including the MacArthur, Park and Ford foundations, as well as the Carnegie Corp, and it also sells its work to various organizations. The center has won numerous awards for its investigative reports, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

The center primarily publishes its own articles and books in print on its website, and it runs a blog on investigative projects. It also collaborates with news organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Financial Times to produce stories that run in those publications. The center has been doing such collaborations for years, though they have increased in recent years.

The center absorbed the Huffington Post Investigative Fund in 2010, around which time it embarked on a new business plan centered on producing its own daily investigative news and dramatically increasing its budget and advertising sales. It launched a new site, iWatch, in early 2011, though its traffic and revenue were lower than expected. It shut down the site and reverted to its original name in August 2012.

The center also runs the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a group of 100 journalists in 50 countries that collaborates on international investigations. The consortium was founded in 1997. In 2013, it received $1.5 million from Australian entrepreneur and Global Mail founder Graeme Wood to improve the consortium.

In 2010, the center began experimenting with crowdfunding investigations through the social micropayment service Kachingle, as well distributing its content through the AP’s non-profit investigative news wire, both to lackluster result. It has also published some works under a Creative Commons license to encourage other outlets to reprint them.

Its board of directors includes Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, former New York Times reporter Jenny 8. Lee and NPR’s Matt Thompson.

Recent Nieman Lab coverage:
Aug. 9, 2021 / Joshua Benton
With a tight focus on inequality and a new CEO, the Center for Public Integrity plots a path forward — The Center for Public Integrity, one of America’s oldest and most storied nonprofit investigative news operations, has a new CEO. That’s a sentence, for better or worse, I could have written quite a few times...
April 4, 2019 / Laura Hazard Owen
As the new CEO of the Center for Public Integrity, Susan Smith Richardson wants to serve communities far beyond Washington — Thirty years after it was founded, the D.C.-based investigative nonprofit Center for Public Integrity operates in a very different news environment from the one in which it began. Statehouse reporting has declined drasti...
March 10, 2016 / Shan Wang
Small screens, full art, can’t lose: Despite their size, phones open up new opportunities for interactives — Data, data, everywhere, and not enough space to display it. At least, that’s the superficial concern that comes to mind when I think of the beautiful, expansive, and interactive experiences we’ve come to know...
March 9, 2016 / Joseph Lichterman
The Political TV Ad Archive is making it easier for journalists to report on campaign spots — As the campaign in New Hampshire intensified leading up to the state’s presidential primary, New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Brian Wallstin wanted to understand more about the glut of political ads that were bl...
July 7, 2015 / Joshua Benton
A globalized world demands globalized investigative reporting; a new study outlines how to do it — Most media has traditionally been defined by geography — local newspapers and local broadcasters building up to national networks and national magazines. Before the web, people in London and New York got nearly all the...

Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

Primary author: Mark Coddington. Main text last updated: April 17, 2014.
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