This is our annual report, which includes information on our personnel composition and our efforts to build a more inclusive and diverse journalism community and news organisation.
Every year, ProPublica releases a report detailing our efforts to broaden diversity throughout the journalism community and in our workplace. Here are links to all of our previous reports, including the 2024 report.
Our Assertion
We think it is essential to have a diverse mix of individuals from all origins, ages, and viewpoints working in our journalism and business operations. Our goal is to increase the number of persons from historically underrepresented populations in journalism in general and investigative journalism in particular. This include women, people of colour, LGBTQ individuals, African Americans, Latinos, and individuals with impairments.
ProPublica’s workforce grew from 172 full-time employees at the beginning of 2023 to 186 in 2024, partly as a result of the establishment of our Northwest team and the expansion of our development, audience, and graphic departments.
We launched a training programme for investigative editors last year that is available to journalists nationwide. We also made a big impression at journalism affinity conferences and hosted a webinar for early career journalists who have previously participated in ProPublica programmes and former conference stipend recipients.
In addition, we kept formalising some of our volunteer-driven diversity initiatives that were previously managed by staff, forged alliances with other news groups, and searched for methods to enhance the internal procedures and culture for all ProPublicans.
Over fifty ProPublicans volunteer their time to work on staff-proposed and -run programmes as members of our Diversity Committee. Liz Sharp, Melissa Sanchez, and Vianna Davila are the co-chairs at the moment.
Staff Breakdown
We followed applicants through the application and interview processes, just like we did the year before. Thirty-six percent of the candidates we spoke with for the twenty-one open posts in 2023 identified as non-Hispanic white, and fifty percent identified as women. We hired persons who identified as women, about 67% of them.
But compared to the people ProPublica has hired in other years, a smaller percentage of those we hired in 2023β29% of them identified as belonging to a racial or ethnic group other than exclusively non-Hispanic white.
Reacting to the hiring figures, ProPublica editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg stated, “One of our core principles is recruiting and retaining a diverse staff.” “We acknowledge that more work needs to be done, but we are proud of the progress we’ve made.”
This year, Engelberg said, ProPublica added a full-time talent acquisition manager βto make sure our job searches reach the broadest possible set of applicants.”
The proportion of all ProPublica employees who identified as exclusively non-Hispanic white in the beginning of 2024 was 62%, a little increase from prior years. The percentage for editorial roles was the same.
At ProPublica, more women than men are employed for the sixth consecutive year. Approximately 2% of our employees identify as transgender or nonbinary. Among staff members holding editorial positions, women made up 51%.
We have been gathering demographic data about our board of directors since 2022. Similar to previous year, half of the fourteen members of the board identified as women. As opposed to 71% the previous year, roughly 64% of the directors identified as non-Hispanic white.
Being open and honest about our own numbers is a crucial component of our commitment to diversity, as we have stated since 2015. The breakdown of our staff is as follows.
(Note: The information in the statistics is based on self-reported information from the employees. In 2022, we started reporting data using the phrase “solely identify as non-Hispanic white,” acknowledging that some people may identify as more than one race but not as a person of colour. We anticipate that this will increase the precision and specificity. The data on the employees is on January 1st of every year. Editors are not all considered managers; rather, managers are employees who oversee other employees. The rounding of percentages may cause them to not add up to 100. This analysis excludes fellows, temporally constrained employees, and part-time employees.)
Fresh Projects
Investigative editor training: For journalists who wish to learn how to oversee, edit, and improve investigative projects that reveal harm and have an impact, ProPublica launched the Investigative Editor Training Programme in 2023. ProPublica head of reporter Ginger Thompson and deputy managing editor Alexandra Zayas created the year-long program’s curriculum with the goal of boosting diversity in the upcoming group of investigative editors. We tested the programme on nine employees of ProPublica. We then improved the programme and extended an invitation to apply to journalists from other organisations. More than 150 editors and reporters from various news outlets around the nation submitted applications. 11 people were chosen to participate in a week-long training at our New York office, where ProPublica editors spoke to them about various elements of the craft, from choosing stories and writing memoranda to overseeing reporting and working on the initial draft. Following that, participants received extra virtual training for the balance of the year and were partnered as mentors with senior ProPublica staff members. This year, we are providing this training to outside participants once more.
Virtual alumni meetup: ProPublica staff members presented a career-development webinar for “alumni” of our different external programmes, such as Emerging Reporters, the Data Institute, and our conference stipends, following a break in 2022. In order to plan this event, Irena Hwang, Maya Miller, and Ellis Simani donated their time and conducted a survey of graduates to find out what kind of talents they were looking to develop. Ginger Thompson, Zahira Torres, Lulu Ramadan, and Kavitha Surana were on a panel on “building your investigative career” during the September virtual event. Subsequently, there were breakout sessions covering pitch workshopping, career advancement, specialised reporting, and editing. Over fifty journalists in their early to mid-career attended the event, and over six ProPublicans served as breakout-room moderators, lending their knowledge to the proceedings. Our objective is to carry out expand on this program’s success in 2024 and provide the community another chance members to come together.
Our Persistent Work
ProPublica approaches its work from three perspectives: inclusivity and retention; talent recruitment and process improvement; and establishing the pipeline (for us and all of investigative journalism).
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