Hi Reader,

Our 2020 Annual Report is out today, detailing extraordinary accomplishments at ProPublica throughout the unprecedented year just past. We hope you’ll read the entire report (available for download here), but I wanted to use this note to thank you for being part of the ProPublica community this year and to share some highlights of the things your support helped make possible.

• From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our work brought clarity to the stakes and consequences of addressing — or failing to address — the crisis. This included stories on missteps at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that hampered the nation’s ability to track and contain the virus’s spread, unprecedented White House meddling inside the public health agency and critical explanatory pieces on asymptomatic carriers and how to understand coronavirus numbers.

• Amid a national reckoning on racial justice, we published important stories that shed light on race and police accountability, inequities in the juvenile justice system and racial disparities in health care.

• In the lead-up to the presidential election, ProPublica produced revelatory reporting on emerging issues such as U.S. Postal Service slowdowns, voting-by-mail concerns and the proliferation of voting misinformation.

In 2020 we also received our sixth Pulitzer Prize, published with 80 partners and grew traffic on our site by 72%, with monthly average page views climbing to 9 million. In a dramatic expansion of our commitment to local investigative journalism, we announced the forthcoming launch of regional reporting hubs in the South and Southwest, in addition to broadening our Illinois efforts to cover a wider swath of the Midwest.

As always, however, we are proudest of the dramatic change our work has spurred:

• After 33 years behind bars, a man our reporting showed was wrongfully convicted for murder was released from prison in Texas.

• Chicago’s punitive ticketing practices were outlawed after we shined a light on them.

• Following a national outcry spurred by our reporting on a Michigan girl who was detained for failing to do online schoolwork, the teen was released and her case dismissed.

• Sen. Richard Burr resigned as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after our revelations about his stock trading just before the coronavirus market crash.

• Prompted by our reporting, Congress passed legislation to stop unemployment agencies from demanding money back when they mistakenly overpay.

• The federal government backed out of what we revealed to be multiple sketchy coronavirus contracts.

• Landlords across four states reversed illegal eviction filings in the face of our inquiries.

This is just a fraction of what your support helped us achieve in 2020, and you can read more about the impact of our work in the full report. We look forward to another year of bringing important, change-making stories to light.

Many thanks,
Dick Tofel, President
ProPublica