Dear ProPublica Reader:

I'm writing, as the end of the year approaches, to ask you to consider making a gift to ProPublica. Your support will help us continue our critically important work of publishing investigative journalism in the public interest -- and with an eye toward spurring change.

Click here to donate to ProPublica.

It's been a very exciting year for ProPublica, and -- much more important -- we think we've done journalism that's made a difference:

• Our "Dollars for Docs" database has shown how nearly 18,000 doctors are being paid by drug companies to push prescription drug sales across the country. For years this information has been kept secret or made hard to find by drug companies. To date, our database is the only place where you'll easily find all this information. Now, patients can search Dollars for Docs to find out if their doctor is taking this money, and news organizations can track what's going on locally; in fact, more than 60 local news organizations have used our database to do stories on local doctors.
• Our initial coverage of the BP Gulf spill made clear that the company's lax safety culture was implicated in the disaster, and this point has only been strengthened as more reporting in the months since the spill has yielded vivid detail.
• Our investigation of police violence in New Orleans has so far resulted in 18 indictments and five guilty pleas, with the New Orleans Police Department now under federal supervision at the new mayor's request.
• We successfully pressed the federal government, over two years, into finally releasing information to help the nation's 400,000 dialysis patients compare the varying levels of care offered at different facilities. An easy-to-use guide will be published before the New Year.
• Our reporting on the financial markets laid bare untold stories of key factors behind the crash of 2008, and how the greed of some in the financial industry delayed the reckoning, but ultimately made it far worse.
• We called attention to the lack of appropriate concern over traumatic brain injuries to our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, including through an article published on the front page of Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military newspaper.
• And before most of this even happened, in April we became the first online news organization to win a Pulitzer Prize.

We couldn't do this important work without the help of friends and supporters.

As you start to think about your year-end giving, I hope you'll include ProPublica, and make a contribution to help us continue this sort of work. Again, just click here to donate.

Happy holidays to you and your families, and many thanks in advance.

~ Paul Steiger