ProPublica announced today the launch of a new reporting team in California — its sixth regional investigative hub and the latest move in a multiyear expansion that has made ProPublica larger than at any point in its 18-year history.
The California newsroom will join a growing network of local ProPublica offices in the Midwest, Northwest, South and Southwest and in Texas with The Texas Tribune. Since opening its first local office in Illinois in 2017, ProPublica has built teams of reporters embedded in cities across the country — journalists who send their children to local schools, follow local issues day to day and can identify important stories in their own communities.
Our new California editor will oversee four ProPublica reporters and a reporting fellow, all of whom will be based in the state, in addition to working with local publishing partners.
“As we’ve grown across the country, we’ve always wanted to have a dedicated California hub covering the nation’s largest state,” said Charles Ornstein, ProPublica’s managing editor of local initiatives. “What happens in California often affects the nation as a whole, from automobile standards to privacy protections to taxation policies. With an election this year and a new governor next year, it’s the perfect time to turn ProPublica’s particular accountability lens on the state.”
California is a hub for many of the issues ProPublica cares most about: technology, climate change, immigration, homelessness, affordable housing and water. It is also a one-party-controlled state increasingly positioning itself as a counterweight to policy shifts in Washington, D.C., and in other statehouses — making independent, nonpartisan accountability reporting all the more essential. If it were a country, California would be the world’s fourth-largest economy.
ProPublica’s previous investigations in California have already spurred considerable change:
- After a Capital & Main and ProPublica investigation found that landlords in Los Angeles were turning low-cost housing into tourist hotels in violation of city law, the Los Angeles Housing Department ordered the owners of 21 buildings to stop renting rooms to tourists. The impact of this investigation is still being felt as the city prepares to host the 2028 Olympics.
- In a landmark lawsuit filed in 2024, the California attorney general accused oil giant ExxonMobil of misleading the public by promoting chemical recycling as a solution for the plastics crisis. The suit cited ProPublica reporting on the company’s claim that it had transformed discarded plastic through an “advanced” chemical recycling technology called pyrolysis.
- And, following an investigation by The Desert Sun and ProPublica that exposed how oil companies across California were profiting from illegal spills and revealed spotty oversight by the state’s oil and gas division, a new law was passed granting the state greater authority to fine oil companies responsible for major spills or other hazards. Later that year, Chevron agreed to pay a record-setting $13 million to two California agencies for past oil spills.
And just today, in partnership with KQED, we published a story about how California’s lax oversight has allowed teachers to keep their teaching licenses and move to other classrooms even after they were fired for sexually harassing students or other types of sexual misconduct.
To help launch this new initiative, ProPublica today began a search for a California editor.
ProPublica’s Broader Expansion
The new California hub is part of a larger set of initiatives to grow ProPublica. At a moment when newsrooms across the country are shrinking — laying off reporters, closing bureaus, pulling back from the investigations that hold powerful institutions to account — ProPublica is doing the opposite. A few highlights:
- An expanded Washington, D.C., bureau with new reporters focused on national security and defense and a new editor, Peter Finn, formerly of The Washington Post, to lead it.
- “Paper Trail,” a new flagship weekly podcast hosted by reporter Jessica Lussenhop. The first episode will be available May 14.
- A business investigations team led by veteran editor Jesse Eisinger and Jake Swearingen, most recently the executive editor of Business Insider
- New, dedicated video teams producing investigative work for Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
- The 50 State Initiative, a commitment through our Local Reporting Network to publish a major accountability project in every state by 2029. The LRN has already partnered with nearly 100 local news organizations since 2018.
Over the past three years, ProPublica’s revenue has grown 66%, from $42 million in 2022 to $70 million in 2025, fueled by donations from more than 80,000 individuals. Our staff is on track to number nearly 250 employees this year, an increase of almost 100 positions since 2022.
“The sustained growth in donations to ProPublica over the past several years reflects something larger — the hunger of readers for independent reporting of verifiable facts and information,” said Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor in chief. “These initiatives reflect our commitment to digging deeper and expanding the ways in which we deliver our findings.”
ProPublica is also releasing its 2025 annual report today, which details the impact of the organization’s journalism over the past year. The report shows how independent, nonpartisan investigative reporting has driven changes in federal and state policy, corporate practices and people’s daily lives. Read the full report here.
“In 2023, ProPublica embarked on its first strategic plan. We are thrilled to see much of that vision come to life: launching more national beats, expanding our local work and growing our audience. This is a time of tremendous change in our country, and accountability reporting is needed now more than ever,” said Robin Sparkman, ProPublica’s president.
