, "the wall street journal" and propublica? who has new and blue-chip reputations for unbiased and carefully researched content? the bottom line is we'll look at where investigative reporting is going in the next five years. as we asked these questions, the news, about the news is kind of scary. ]a recent pew report discussed that the continued erosion of news reporting resources combined with the new media opportunities, present growing opportunities in politics, government, and agencies and corporations to take their messages directly to the public without a filter. here's a snapshot from the pew report. newspaper newsroom cutbacks for the industry down over 30% since 2000. in local tv, sports, weather and traffic now account for an average of 40% of the content. cnn, the cable channel that branded itself around deep reporting, has cut story packages and half. across three of the major cable channels, coverage of live events and live reports during the day, which requires expensive cruise and staff, have been cut by 30%. here

so what in the world is propublica? how are you funded? who is your audience? what is your overarching asian? -- what is your overarching goal? larry: thanks, jack. appreciated being here with the consumer federation and with this cluster's panel of reporters. as a lowly editor i'm somewhat , of an odd man out, but propublica is a nonprofit independent newsroom that started about six years ago. and that was in the midst of the real upheaval in the way the internet was changing the news business. there was real fear among many of us at the time that the traditional news organizations because of the change in a business model were not going to be able to devote the amount of resources and time to investigative reporting in the sense of long-term in depth work that takes reporters months to produce. and at the time a lot of different kinds of elements of a noose ecosystem started to spring up. propublica raised money from foundations, from individuals, and has built over the last six, seven years a newsroom of about 50 people, focused only on the journalism in the

we have at "propublica" benefited from openness on medical data. we have been able to say things about the way spending is done in medicare programs and medicare part d program that has never been done and i think they deserve credit for that but let's be clear, that is the easy stuff. when you get to the question about what's the president going to do about syria or how to handle the questions about immigration, to have no debate or programs suddenly dropped on people's heads it works in the short term but not long term for any of us. >> sreenivasan: stephen engelberg, thank you for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> ifill: chicago voters return to the polls next month in that city's first runoff election for mayor. president obama's former chief of staff, current mayor rahm emanuel, is in a race against cook county commissioner jesus "chuy" garcia. their contest is exposing a real divide within the democratic party. special correspondent chris bury has our story. >> reporter: in chicago, where the irish-american daley clan dominated for decades, chic

so propublica is like a couple of other nonprofit news organizations, some of which were mentioned up here before, the center for public integrity, which is the one that brian worked with, the center for investigative reporting based in san francisco. as the internet has changed things and produced a lot of problems for what we call legacy news organizations, it's also opened up a lot of opportunities for different kinds of organizations to spring up. and we're one of those groups. jack: so larry what -- in your reporting does propublica see as one of its roles the object to influence and change public policy? lawrence: yes. that's right. the -- as a much more sort of focused way. implicitly all investigative journalism that's done by anybody from "the washington post," "new york times," "washington journal," nbc news, there's an idea if you expose things that are hidden or people don't want things to be known or abuses of consumer or abuses of power that may lead to change. we have a much more explicit mission, when we tackle a topic we want to take it to the point if people want to

. -- had been so propublica is like the center for public integrity that bryan worked with the center for investigative reporting and as the internet has changed to produce a lot of problems for what we call legacy news organization and has opened opportunities for different kinds two's spring up and we are one of those groups. >> in your reporting does to a dynasty as one of its roles the object to influence or change public policy? >> yes. that's right in a more focused way and implicitly it is done by anybody from the washington journal or abc news there is implicitly the idea if you expose the things that our hidden that people don't want to be known or the abuses of consumers or abuse of power that leads to your change but, permission is when we tackle a topic we want to do take it to the point where people want to act on reform or change they can do which. that means with a choice of what we pursue the leads to the act. >> party is the investigative reporter for the wall street fire he reported for "the national journal" and will call. the first covered tax legislation into the

organizations whose missions day in and day out is to do outstanding journalism, like "texas tribune," propublica and the "voice of san diego." in the short term we've also given breathing space to 27 online news sites around the country by funding 15% of their annual budgets. they have to survive. we financed tech incubators at "the philadelphia inquirer" and "the boston globe." tools such as document cloud by staffers, and right now we're in the middle of a project to create a new open-source community platform with the "washington post," "the new york times" and mozilla. we're still experimenting, the sliders up no-show so we've moved to more and smaller projects from left to right. the chart represents more than about $90 million in active grants during this four-year period of time which is a drop in the bucket compared to what google, microsoft or facebook might spend on development. and sure i wish these companies have spent their buckets on r&d when we were making 20 or 30% profit. but that was then in this is now. and we should be as mad as hell and fighting figuring out what to do next.