Journalists talk a lot about how our work makes a difference.

It can sound a bit abstract. But the impact is real.

At the Chicago Tribune, Steve Mills and I wrote a five-part series in November 1999 on the failure of the death penalty in Illinois (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). We dissected all 285 of the state’s capital cases and found: at least 33 times, a defendant was represented at trial by an attorney who has been disbarred or suspended; at least 35 times, a defendant sent to death row was Black and the jury that determined guilt or sentence all white; in at least 46 cases, prosecutors presented testimony from jailhouse informants, witnesses who are notoriously unreliable.

In January 2000, two months after our series was published, the governor declared a moratorium on executions, saying he would sign no more death warrants until he could be sure “everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty.” While making his historic announcement (this was the first time any state had taken such dramatic action), the governor cited our series’ findings. Three years later, the governor emptied death row. Again citing our work, he commuted 167 death sentences, the largest blanket clemency in the modern era of capital punishment.

What an official says, what the records show

In 1994, a rookie police officer in Newport News, Virginia, was shot to death while posing as a pizza delivery man in a robbery sting. Twelve hours after the officer’s death, the police chief called the operation “textbook.” As a reporter at the Daily Press, I got a transcript of a closed court hearing that showed the operation was bungled from start to finish. It was hastily planned. The officer wasn’t properly trained. He was easy to make as an undercover officer. (For one thing, there was no pizza in the box.) As a result of our reporting, the police chief and a sergeant were fired, and eight other officers were demoted or otherwise disciplined.

In 2018, as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, I worked with Christian Sheckler, a South Bend Tribune reporter, to investigate the criminal justice system in Elkhart, Indiana. The Elkhart police chief told an oversight commission that two officers “just went a little overboard” with a suspect in custody, without saying just what they did. Christian got a copy of the video. It showed the two officers punching a handcuffed man in the face more than 10 times. (The same month we published stories about the video, we detailed the extensive disciplinary records of the department’s supervisors.) Afterward, the police chief resigned. The mayor abandoned his re-election campaign. The two officers were convicted of federal civil rights charges and sentenced to prison. (Our reporting also had other fallout, described in this ProPublica story.)

Quick and not so quick

At the Seattle Times, I wrote a series in 2004 with Florangela Davila and Justin Mayo on the failures of Washington state’s public-defense system. One story featured a public defender with a staggering caseload, 6½ times higher than what she should have had. (“It is so much,” she told us. “Frankly, it’s malpractice per se. It’s insane. You just can’t help people when you’re dealing with numbers like that.”) In 2012, the Washington State Supreme Court adopted caseload limits, citing our work.

So that took eight years.

At ProPublica, I wrote a story on February 26, 2024, about a case in which federal prosecutors presented one version of the truth against a Baltimore man named Keyon Paylor, then an opposing version of the truth against a corrupt police officer who had arrested Paylor. Both versions could not have been true. On February 28, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice reversed its position and filed a motion conceding Paylor’s conviction should be thrown out “in the interest of justice.”

So that took two days.

(A judge promptly granted the DOJ’s motion, after which Paylor’s pending indictment was tossed. Nine days after the story was published, Paylor went from convicted to exonerated.)

Health care

At the Seattle Times I worked with Mike Berens, one of the country’s finest investigative reporters. He’s particularly adept at using data to unravel complicated health care stories.

In 2008 we analyzed millions of computerized health care records and death certificates to reveal that the number of hospital patients infected with MRSA had skyrocketed in Washington state. Over a decade the cases had gone from 141 a year to 4,723. We also identified 672 previously undisclosed deaths attributable to MRSA. The investigative series led to new laws that heightened infection controls and patient-safety standards. State health regulators began conducting surprise inspections at hospitals, and hospitals were required to screen at-risk patients for MRSA.

In 2012 we wrote a three-part series called Methadone and the Politics of Pain, showing how the state of Washington had steered Medicaid patients to a cheap but unpredictable painkiller linked to more than 2,000 deaths. The state quickly responded by issuing an emergency public-health advisory to more than 1,000 pharmacists and to about 17,000 licensed health-care professionals, warning of methadone’s risks. The state also reversed policy: Instead of encouraging doctors to prescribe methadone for pain, it advised that methadone be treated as a drug of last resort.

Secrecy

I wrote about a dozen stories with Justin Mayo, Steve Miletich and others about the illegal sealing of hundreds of court files in King County, Washington. (These stories, published in the Seattle Times in 2006, included: The cases your judges are hiding from you; Failures by state, caregiver kept secret in child-rape case; and Woman’s coma leads to secrecy, silence.) 

Once we began publishing, the judges stopped sealing. After we wrote one story (School district ignored warnings, then silenced girls fondled by teacher), a school district opened an investigation of a high school principal. The principal thereafter resigned.

Juvenile justice

With Meribah Knight, of Nashville Public Radio, I wrote this 2021 ProPublica story about the juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee. Children were arrested for a crime that does not exist, in an investigation led by a police officer who had been disciplined 37 times, on charges approved by judicial commissioners without law degrees, in a system overseen by a judge who failed the bar exam four times and whose appointed jailer adopted a written policy for detaining kids that violated Tennessee law but escaped the notice of state inspectors year after year. For over a decade, the county had arrested and illegally jailed hundreds of kids.

Our reporting spurred immediate demands for reform. Eleven members of Congress called for a civil rights investigation. Tennessee’s governor called for a review of Rutherford County’s juvenile court judge. Middle Tennessee State University cut ties with the judge. The county created an oversight board for the jail. In 2022, state lawmakers proposed a bill to remove the judge, citing an “appalling abuse of power.” An hour after ProPublica wrote about that bill, the judge announced plans to step down, saying she would retire rather than run for reelection.

(In 2023, Meribah hosted a four-part podcast produced by Serial called “The Kids of Rutherford County.”)

Workplace conditions

At ProPublica I wrote a story in 2020 with Justin Elliott and Ariana Tobin about Arise Virtual Solutions, a little-known customer-service business that has helped some of America’s best-known businesses shed labor costs. Here’s an excerpt:

After paying about $1,500 for home office equipment: a computer, two headsets and a phone line dedicated to Arise; after paying Arise to run a check on her background; after passing Arise’s voice-assessment test and signing Arise’s nondisclosure form; after paying for and passing Arise’s introductory training, to which she devoted three days, unpaid; after paying for and passing a certification course to provide customer service for Arise client AT&T, to which she devoted 44 unpaid days; after then being informed she had to get more training yet — an additional 10 days, for which she was told she would be paid, but wasn’t; and then, after finally getting a chance to sign up for hours and do work for which she would be paid (except for her time spent waiting for technical support, or researching customer issues, or huddling with supervisors), Tami Pendergraft spent three weeks fielding telephone calls from AT&T customers, after which she received a single paycheck.

For $96.12.

Our story sparked the District of Columbia attorney general to file a lawsuit against Arise, alleging it failed to pay minimum wage and overtime. In a settlement, Arise agreed to pay $2 million to workers in D.C. and to stop operating there. In a separate lawsuit filed after our story, the U.S. Department of Labor accused Arise of misclassifying more than 22,000 employees as independent contractors. The labor department said its suit “may be the largest misclassification case in its history.”

Impact that’s hard to measure

In 2015, while working at The Marshall Project, I partnered with ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller to write “An Unbelievable Story of Rape.” The story was a cautionary tale, published seven years after an 18-year-old had reported being raped in Lynnwood, Washington, only to be accused of making the story up. Written when it was, the story didn’t lead to anyone being disciplined or to new laws being passed. But the story had a profound impact in its reach and in its effect on changing people’s understanding of trauma.

The story was read by millions of people. (The social network This. said it was the year’s No. 1 story, with more shared links than any other.) We turned it into a This American Life episode, which was listened to by millions of people. The story then became a dramatized Netflix series, “Unbelievable,” which, in its first four weeks alone, was watched by 32 million people.

The story became an object lesson—and a training tool—on misperceptions about trauma, with people assuming, incorrectly, that there is only one right way for someone to act after being hurt. Washington state’s police academy assigned the story to recruits. A university in Utah shared the story with people on campus who worked with rape victims. The executive director of Mount Sinai’s Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program sent the story to her entire staff, writing: “It is one of the clearest and most tragic examples of the profound and sad impact not examining our own preconceived notions and not acting from an informed and compassionate place can have on someone’s life. I think it, in the end, is also a hopeful statement on how, if we are willing, we can learn and improve and evolve in how we care for other people—personally, as professionals, and as a culture/system.”