Background
We work with a lot of data at ProPublica. It's a big part of almost everything we do — from data-driven stories to graphics to interactive news applications. So, in February 2014, we launched the Data Store as “an experiment”. Our hypothesis: The data that powers investigative reporting would be useful and valuable to many other people, not just those in our newsroom.
Thousands of users helped make our experiment a success. Today, the Data Store is an ever-expanding clearinghouse for the data used in our reporting. We hope that providing a central source for these resources will help them reach a broader community and will support, in spirit and financially, our journalistic mission.
The ProPublica Data Store continues to be an experiment in progress. If you have suggestions for datasets we should make available or features we should add, please don't hesitate to contact us.
About the Data
Like most newsrooms, we make extensive use of government data — some downloaded from "open data" sites and some obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. But much of our data comes from our journalists spending months scraping and assembling material from websites and Acrobat documents. Some data requires months of labor to clean or requires combining data sets from different sources in a way that's never been done before.
For datasets that are available as downloads from government websites and other public sources, we've simply linked to the sites to ensure you can quickly get the most up-to-date data. For raw, as-is datasets we requested (and received) from government sources, you'll find a free download link that simply requires you agree to a simplified version of our Terms of Use.
For datasets that are the result of significant expenditures of our time and effort, we charge a reasonable fee. Prices for journalists and academic researchers are posted with each data set. Those wanting to use data commercially should reach out to us to discuss pricing.
We also offer premium datasets that have been created by partners and peers in the journalism community.
About Selling Your Data
News organizations can submit unique data sets that have been cleaned, analyzed, documented and used in published reporting. ProPublica will manage sales, marketing, and fulfillment of data sets to customers on behalf of partner news organizations. If you have a data set that you would like to sell, please contact us.