ProPublica will open its first regional publishing operation, ProPublica Illinois, with headquarters in Chicago, in 2017. Our plan is to publish investigative journalism on key issues across the state of Illinois and in the city of Chicago.

With the challenges facing regional and local newspapers, and the drastic cutting of reporting staffs, accountability journalism at the state and local levels has been left shrinking and underfunded, weakening democratic governance at a critical moment. ProPublica Illinois seeks to help fill this gap. In accordance with our publishing model, we will also work with local partners to bring Illinois readers more high-quality accountability reporting.

Our key priority now is building a team, many with strong local ties and established reputations within the community, to staff this exciting expansion. To learn more about ProPublica Illinois, see our FAQ.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is ProPublica Illinois?

With headquarters opening in Chicago in 2017, ProPublica Illinois will be our first regional publishing operation. Our plan is to cover stories with moral force that will be of particular interest to people living or working in the state of Illinois. Some of the reporting will undoubtedly be of broader interest regionally and nationally.  

How big will it be?

A search for an experienced Chicago-based editor is underway and, once that person is selected, we’ll begin hiring staff.  We envision a team of roughly 10 journalists, including an editor, reporters, a producer/designer and people who will work on data, social media, distribution and fundraising.  

Where will the stories appear?

We plan to build on the model that has proven successful at the national level, which means working with partners and building a robust web platform of our own. ProPublica’s national operation has more than 460,000 Twitter followers, 200,000 Facebook fans and email lists of more than 90,000. This has given us the ability to reach hundreds of thousands of readers, even when our stories appear without a publishing partner. Over time, we hope to build up a comparably robust regional audience for our Illinois-based work. We expect to build partnerships with area news organizations that can help our work reach wider audiences and achieve maximum impact.  

How will collaboration work with local news organizations?

As with ProPublica’s current operations, we anticipate a variety of possible collaborative models. Sometimes, we will co-publish ProPublica-written stories with local outlets. Other times, we might work directly with reporters at other organizations to develop investigations jointly. We also expect to create news apps based on state and local data that would spark reporting by other news organizations, giving our work a larger ripple effect.  

What is the funding model for this venture?

ProPublica Illinois is made possible in part by seed funding from the Ford Foundation. A local fundraising effort has begun and will accelerate in 2017. Ultimately, our aim is for the unit to be fully locally funded.  

What will be covered?

Broadly speaking, we will try to do stories that hold powerful institutions to account, from politics to government to business. We will take on stories that are not being covered by others, with an eye toward deep-dive reporting.

How can I apply for a job there?

We’ll be posting jobs here as they become available. You can sign up to be notified when there are openings: