Model and Strategy
The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.
Over the coming years, we will set up local criminal justice investigative teams in local markets around the country. We hope to have local news teams in five cities over the next five years. They will be led by a local editor-in chief and staffed by local reporters who will have the time and the resources to dig deeply into complex, often hidden issues in the criminal justice system.
Our award-winning national team will back up our local colleagues with editing assistance, data analysis, audience outreach, finance and human resources, and fundraising. We see this as the most cost-effective model for local criminal justice journalism: to centralize as many functions as possible, serving several newsrooms, while keeping the actual reporters and editors locally rooted. We will pilot this approach in Cleveland, where we have been working on the ground with community members.
In both our national and local efforts, we will continue to produce stories that have direct relevance to the everyday lives of justice-affected people. Our local news teams will package and deliver stories using creative methods to reach audiences traditionally neglected by the mainstream media. The Marshall Project is the only national newsroom in America to prioritize people who live and work behind bars, and their families and loved ones, as an audience.
Impact
We rigorously track three different kinds of impact:
Did our story lead to a change in law, regulation, or policy? For example,
- Los Angeles County recently approved a motion to ban local agencies from keeping federal funds meant for foster kids after hearing The Marshall Project’s report on NPR.
- Mississippi took control of a prison run by the for-profit Management & Training Corporation after The Marshall Project co-published an investigation along with three local media outlets. We reported that MTC was continuing to charge the state for the wages of prison officials who were not showing up for work. The state of Mississippi has since clawed back $1.3 million from MTC.
Did our story inform the work of advocates trying to change the system? For example,
- In St. Francois County, Missouri, the parents of Billy Ames will receive a $1.8 million settlement in the wake of our exposé on the horrors of the local jail where he died. Local attorneys in St. Louis, prompted by our story, filed a federal class action lawsuit alleging “unconstitutional, discriminatory, and dangerous conditions.”
Did our story inspire other media to cover criminal justice better? For example,
- We process criminal justice data to make it easier for other media to use. When we published an analysis of incarceration rates based on U.S. Census Bureau numbers, it powered stories by many news agencies.
Leadership
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Susan Chira
Editor in Chief
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Carroll Bogert
President