Exclusive: ProPublica expands to California
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ProPublica is launching a new regional reporting hub in California as part of a broader effort to grow its investigative footprint across the country.
Why it matters: The expansion comes on the heels of ProPublica's best revenue year on record, and a 2026 Pulitzer win for local reporting.
Zoom in: The new hub will cover the role California plays in national politics, as well as issues that are important to local residents, including technology, climate change, immigration, homelessness, affordable housing and water, per managing editor Charles Ornstein.
- It will also look at topics that impact some of California's biggest industries, such as sports and entertainment.
State of play: The California hub represents the organization's sixth regional expansion since it started local reporting in 2018.
- ProPublica has established similar hubs in the Midwest, Northwest, South, Southwest and Texas.
- ProPublica now has employees living and working across 29 states and Washington, D.C. It also has 20 local reporting network partnerships, and it's on its way to having partnerships in all 50 states, per Ornstein.
- Currently, much of ProPublica's local footprint is focused on bellwether states in presidential elections, such as Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina.
Context: ProPublica often teams with local newsrooms on major stories and investigations. Its latest Pulitzer, for example, was won alongside its local reporting network partner the Connecticut Mirror.
- The outlet has worked with more than 300 newsrooms in 18 years, per ProPublica president Robin Sparkman.
- The outlet, which is primarily philanthropically supported, raises money from local and national donors to support its expansion efforts, per Sparkman.
- Each local hub can cost around $1.5 million to establish, Sparkman said.
By the numbers: ProPublica's expansion comes as the outlet sees record-high interest in donations.
- Over the past three years, its operating revenue has grown 66% from $42 million in 2022 to $70 million in 2025.
- Its donor base surpassed 80,000 last year.
The big picture: Investigative reporting can be expensive to produce and often challenging to monetize.
- Because ProPublica's donor base is so diversified, the outlet is not beholden to any single individual or advertisers, Sparkman noted.
- The organization, which positions itself as independent and nonpartisan, "can write about whatever the editors think is important, and that is a tremendous luxury, and it shows up in the quality and richness of the journalism," she said.
Zoom out: More outlets are leaning into nonprofit structures to fund local reporting.
- The Associated Press launched an independent, nonprofit sister organization in 2024 called the AP Fund for Journalism to raise at least $100 million to expand state and local news.
- For ProPublica, philanthropic funding ensures it can keep all of its local coverage free. The outlet also encourages other newsrooms to reprint its content under a Creative Commons license, Sparkman said.
What to watch: In addition to local expansion plans, ProPublica is also looking to expand its D.C. newsroom and multimedia footprint. It will launch its flagship investigative journalism podcast "Paper Trail" on May 14.
