ProPublica wants to get in the magazine business.

The investigative news nonprofit is launching a monthly digital magazine for iOS devices that will collect the best of its reporting on current topics in the news. The first issue of ProPublica The Magazine, “In the Crosshairs,” is focused on war and gun violence, with stories on drone strikes and the Guatemalan civil war.

ProPublica The Magazine is free and will be delivered via Apple’s Newsstand. And that, more than developing a new line of revenue, is the point for ProPublica: finding a new avenue to reach readers. Specifically, as ProPublica president Dick Tofel told me, to get mobile readers.

“The real point is this puts us in the Newsstand, that pushes us to people, which we hope is a big plus,” he said.

As a news organization, ProPublica has always used partnerships with others to spread its work to new readers. But as the site has matured, staffers have invested more time in building their own audience. A big area of desired growth, Tofel told me, is in mobile, and on iOS devices in particular.

The way Tofel sees it, the magazine is like a monthly version of ProPublica’s work packaging stories for ebooks. But the magazine will allow ProPublica to be a little more timely, while also being thematic around issues that are important to readers. Or, Tofel puts it another way, “It’s a little like This American Life, where he does those multi-story episodes.”

ProPublica is not alone in wanting to develop a product that can repackage reporting and is a good fit for mobile devices. Earlier in June, The Atlantic introduced The Atlantic Weekly, which collects the work of The Atlantic, The Atlantic Wire, and The Atlantic Cities for $2.99 a month. ProPublica partnered with 29th Street Publishing to create the magazine. The company, which has also helped publishers like The Awl create magazines for iOS, uses a relatively lightweight CMS that makes it easy for publishers to transform existing stories into mobile-friendly reads.

Since ProPublica isn’t bringing on additional staff to produce the monthly magazine, they needed something easy to use, said Krista Kjellman Schmidt, ProPublica’s deputy news apps editor. Schmidt will be responsible for preparing the magazine each month, working with other editors to identify a theme and combing through ProPublica’s archive to select the best stories. Schmidt said she’s already at work on the second issue, which looks at race and housing in America. “These stories we’re trying to patch together in a new way so readers can see the long arc of an investigation,” she said.

Schmidt said the magazine is an experiment for ProPublica. While they have an iPhone app, many readers also prefer reading the site on a mobile browser. The magazine puts ProPublica into another venue on iOS devices in Newsstand, setting it up to be discovered by new readers. The richer magazine-like design encourages publishers to find new ways to curate stories and push users to read deeply, she said. Schmidt said they decided to deliver the magazine monthly to gauge reader interest and how the production process fits into their other routines. She said they’ll evaluate the project over the course of the next year.