For nearly half a century, the Center for Investigative Reporting—home to Reveal and Mother Jones, after their historic 2024 merger—has been where fearless, award-winning journalism meets relentless, cross-platform innovation. We are proud to be the nation’s first nonprofit newsroom, and our trailblazing investigative journalism combines a no-holds-barred approach to social media, video, and audio storytelling, combating disinformation and turbocharging engagement.
Over the past year, we have covered debates over the future of our democracy, civil rights, reproductive health, the climate crisis, and much more. But how we shared our work was just as important as what we covered. The public increasingly relies on social platforms, where highly curated “news” comes to them—often from influencers with no background in BS detection. We made a bet that our journalism could command huge audiences there, and by bringing our reporting to places like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, we reached millions who weren’t getting news anywhere else. Across print, web, radio, podcast, social platforms, and documentary film, we now reach a growing monthly audience of 10 million, many disaffected from traditional media yet eager for credible, compelling information. That’s all while keeping our MoJo magazine subscriber base growing, and radio listeners glued to the hundreds of stations broadcasting Reveal.
Our most impactful recent multiplatform stories reflect our audience’s thirst for deep reporting and stylish storytelling. In a groundbreaking partnership between CIR and the Center for Public Integrity, “40 Acres and a Lie” uncovered more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people who received land grant reparations following the Civil War, only to have them taken back and returned to former plantation owners. Their stories were brought to life in six articles in Mother Jones; a searchable land title database that made records from the Freedmen’s Bureau readily available to the public for the first time; and a three-part radio and podcast series from Reveal.
In “Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother,” Mark Follman profiled Chin Rodger, whose quest to prevent another gun tragedy began following her own son’s shooting massacre in 2014. Building on Follman’s decade of work investigating the causes behind mass shootings, the story was featured on Mother Jones‘ July/August cover, as well as in an episode of Reveal. And following the success of her CIR Studios’ documentary film Victim/Suspect, reporter Rachel de Leon teamed up with Julia Lurie to tell the story of a Florida woman who was sexually assaulted by her adoptive father as a young teen and charged with false reporting, only to later document the assaults on her phone and help send her abuser to prison. The story appeared in MoJo and on PBS’s NewsHour and attracted more than 2 million TikTok views within a week. Short social videos were a core part of each rollout, translating complex stories into accessible, small-screen content—essential for discoverability.
The results speak for themselves: This year our work was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist—on top of an already sagging trophy case including Emmys, National Magazine Awards, Webbys, Peabodys, and duPonts.
