Combine generous funding, a mission singularly focused on investigative journalism and a team of exceptionally talented reporters and you get ProPublica, the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize.
In April 2010 ProPublica won the Pulitzer, print journalism's highest honor, in the investigative reporting category for a 13,000-word story by Sheri Fink on the life-and-death decisions made by New Orleans doctors during Hurricane Katrina.
"It is a validation," Stephen Engelberg, managing editor for the Manhattan-based nonprofit, told The Associated Press. "To be recognized by your peers is an honor and it sort of says to the rest of the group: 'Yes, they're here. They're real. They are doing very serious journalism.'"
The award was made all the more impressive by the fact that it came just two years after the site was founded by Herbert and Marion Sandler, former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corp. They hired Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to be the site's editor-in-chief. But more importantly, the Sandlers committed $10 million a year to the project.
That level of funding has allowed ProPublica to operate as a tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation, free of the usual pressures and demands of a for-profit news organization. It also enabled Steiger to hire a staff of journalistic heavy-hitters, including a number of Pulitzer winners.
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Sheri Fink photo courtesy ProPublica
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