"We see a huge hunger for long-form content that has narrative drive, deep reporting, and therefore can persuade people to action."ProPublica, the first online news organization to win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Their work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.”Here ProPublica managing editor Stephen Engelberg, general manager Richard Tofel, and senior reporter Dafna Linzer talk about the importance of impartial investigative reporting and the way ebooks are changing the game for the better. Continue reading →
Regular readers will remember my outraged rant post from almost a year ago, reacting to the news that the Central Intelligence Agency faked a vaccination campaign in Pakistan as a way of getting close to Osama Bin Laden’s hide-out, hoping to prove his presence by using a vaccine needle to grab a sample of DNA. I felt, and still feel, that the maneuver — which was belatedly acknowledged by the CIA — was a cynical attempt to hijack the credibility that public health workers have built up over decades with local populations. I especially felt it endangered the status of the fraught polio-eradication campaign, which over the past decade has been challenged in majority-Muslim areas in Africa and South Asia over beliefs that polio vaccination ... Continue reading →
The investigative news non-profit was a bold experiment in traditional reporting in the time of digital upheaval. Five years later, it's still a viable organization. The newsroom of ProPublica celebrates the announcement that it won a Pulitzer Prize for the second year in a row in 2011. (AP) Among all the nonprofit and for-profit news organizations founded in the digital era when so many traditional print publications have suffered economic catastrophe, the most respected new enterprise is ProPublica. Launched in 2007-08 with a $30 million long-term commitment from the West Coast philanthropists Herbert and Marion Sandler, ProPublica has succeeded by every measurement. It has won a dazzling array of prizes, including the 2011 Pulitzer for National Reporting honoring a series called "The Wall Street Money ... Continue reading →
No minimum$100,000$150,000$200,000$250,000$300,000$350,000$400,000$450,000$500,000$550,000$600,000$650,000$700,000$750,000$800,000$850,000$900,000$950,000$1,000,000$1,100,000$1,200,000$1,300,000$1,400,000$1,500,000$1,600,000$1,700,000$1,800,000$1,900,000$2,000,000$3,000,000$4,000,000$5,000,000 TO No maximum$100,000$150,000$200,000$250,000$300,000$350,000$400,000$450,000$500,000$550,000$600,000$650,000$700,000$750,000$800,000$850,000$900,000$950,000$1,000,000$1,100,000$1,200,000$1,300,000$1,400,000$1,500,000$1,600,000$1,700,000$1,800,000$1,900,000$2,000,000$3,000,000$4,000,000$5,000,000 Continue reading →
If you have the sniffles and you want medicine that contains pseudoephedrine–a chemical that dries up the hardest cases of congestion–you have to submit yourself to a mild privacy violation and a sometimes major inconvenience. Sudafed contains a key ingredient used by amateur chemists to produce the illegal drug methamphetamine or crystal meth. Pseudoephedrine-based therapies–including Johnson & Johnson’s Sudafed line, Pfizer‘s Advil Cold & Sinus, and others–have been banned from store shelves since 2006. To buy them you need to find a pharmacy, which takes a copy of your driver’s license number when you make a purchase. Often it’s difficult to find a pharmacy that’s open when you need it–or one that’s fully stocked. There’s a price paid in convenience by the non-drug abusers in ... Continue reading →
