As every year, ProPublica’s projects mix deeply reported stories presented in engaging ways with rich, interactive news applications that let readers pore over the data to understand complex topics for themselves.
Here are some highlights of our work in the past year:
CHINA’S MEMORY HOLE is a multimedia project that detected, collected, and translated images deleted by Sina Weibo, “China’s Twitter.” The images provided a window into the Chinese elite’s self-image and its fears, as well as a lens through which to understand China’s vast system of censorship.
During the last decade, more than 1,500 Americans died after accidentally taking too much of a drug renowned for its safety: acetaminophen, one of the nation’s most popular pain relievers. USE ONLY AS DIRECTED was an immersive story with embedded multimedia and rich data, showing that the FDA has long been aware of studies showing the risks of acetaminophen, as had the maker of Tylenol.
In April, Medicare released, for the first time, details on payments to individual doctors and other health professionals serving the 46 million seniors and disabled in its Part B program. TREATMENT TRACKER helps readers understand how Medicare’s payments work and where they can go wrong, and helps them look up their own providers and see information about them with rich contextual information.
Sixty years after the Supreme Court declared an end to “separate but equal” education, many Southern school districts have moved back in time, isolating poor black and Latino students in segregated schools. In SEGREGATION NOW, ProPublica investigates Tuscaloosa’s city schools, which are among the most rapidly resegregating in the country.
Heading to the emergency room? You may wait a while before a doctor or other treating professional sees you — and the hospital nearest to you might not be the one that sees you the fastest. ER WAIT WATCHER is an interactive news application that lets people look up average ER wait times, as reported by hospitals to the federal government, as well as the time it takes to get there in current traffic, as reported by Google.
The growth of temp work following the Great Recession is harming workers and burdening the economy as a whole. TEMP LAND used deep reporting, interactive graphics and innovative social media to tell the untold stories of America’s most exploited workers.
There are roughly 45,000 Americans “missing in action” from World War II, Korea and Vietnam whose remains are considered recoverable. Despite spending roughly $100 million annually, the Pentagon identifies only identify 72 people each year, on average. At the current rate, it would take them more than 600 years to finish the job. Outdated methods contribute to the Pentagon’s slow pace — unlike most other modern efforts around the world, the U.S. military doesn’t use DNA as the first and primary means of identifying the remains. FAILING THE FALLEN used courageous reporting and rich multimedia to reveal the misplaced priorities and poor decision-making that led to this state of affairs.
