The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, online

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...

organization focusing on issues related to criminal justice in the United States. It was founded by former

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...

manager Neil Barsky with former ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' executive editor

Bill Keller Bill Keller (born January 18, 1949) is an American journalist. He was the founding editor-in-chief of '' The Marshall Project'', a nonprofit that reports on criminal justice in the United States. Previously, he was a columnist for ''The New Yo ...

as its first editor-in-chief. Its website states that it aims to "create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system." Susan Chira has been editor-in-chief since 2019. It has won the Pulitzer Prize twice. The organization's name honors

Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...

, the NAACP's civil rights activist and attorney whose arguments won the landmark

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

school desegregation case, '' Brown vs. Board of Education'', who later became the first African-American justice of that Court.

History

The Marshall Project began as an idea of Neil Barsky, a former hedge-fund manager, in November 2013. When writing an op-ed in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', Barsky thought it might be a good opportunity to plug the idea, so he included a brief description of the project and the website URL in his byline. In February 2014, ''The New York Times'' reported that Bill Keller, who had been executive editor at ''The New York Times'' from July 2003 to September 2011, was going to work for the Marshall Project. The Marshall Project publishes journalistic and opinion pieces on its own website, and also collaborates with news organizations and magazines to publish investigations. Its first two investigations were published in August 2014 (on its own website and in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' together) and in October 2014 (on its own website and in '' Slate''). It also publishes a weekly feature called "Life Inside," where people who work or live in the criminal justice system tell their stories in first-person essays. The Marshall Project also now publishes News Inside, a print publication distributed in hundreds of prisons and jails across the United States. The project officially launched in November 2014. Its first editor-in-chief was former ''

'' executive editor

. The outlet's reporting in its first five years garnered it a Pulitzer Prize and other journalism awards, with reporting focused on various issues, including prison abuse and rape, privatized prisons, and the treatment of incarcerated youth and mentally ill people.Zainab Sultan
Exit Interview: Bill Keller on his time at The Marshall Project
''Columbia Journalism Review'' (April 1, 2019). Keller retired in 2019 and was succeeded as editor-in-chief by Susan Chira. The Marshall Project and the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

partnered for 15 months to track the number of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

infections and deaths in federal prisons. Other recent partners include USA Today and

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

. Reporter Keri Blakinger has a regular column with NBC News.

Organization and funding

As of August 2021, The Marshall Project had a staff of 48, with eight additional contributing writers, five of whom are currently incarcerated. The Marshall Project is funded by donations and grants from foundations and individuals. As of August 2021, the foundations and individuals listed on the website as supporters include the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Arnold Ventures,

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Maverick Capital Foundation, Neil Barsky, Open Society Foundations, Propel, Rockefeller Family Fund, Timothy and Michele Barakett, the Tow Foundation and Trinity Wall Street.

Critical reception

Joe Pompeo wrote of The Marshall Project that it had had a great start due to a mix of good initial publicity and association with high-profile names. The Marshall Project has also been identified as part of a new and experimental

non-profit journalism Non-profit journalism (abbreviated as NPJ, also known as a not-for-profit journalism or think tank journalism) is the practice of journalism as a non-profit organization instead of a for-profit business. NPJ groups are able to operate and serve the ...

format. It has been compared with the non-profit ''

ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...

'', the

Center for Investigative Reporting The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is a nonprofit news organization based in Emeryville, California. It was founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization, and has since grown into a multi-plat ...

, ''

Inside Climate News ''Inside Climate News'' is a non-profit news organization, focusing on environmental journalism.Curtis BrainardInsideClimate wins a Pulitzer ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (April 16, 2013). The publication writes that it "covers clean energy, c ...

'', and ''

The Texas Tribune ''The Texas Tribune'' is a news website headquartered in Austin, Texas. It aims to promote civic engagement through original, explanatory journalism and public events. Its website and content in various delivery platforms serve as an alternati ...

'', and also with recent for-profit journalistic experiments such as '' Vox'' and ''

FiveThirtyEight ''FiveThirtyEight'', sometimes rendered as ''538'', is an American website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in th ...

''. The Marshall Project has also been praised for its timely launch given current bipartisan interest in criminal justice reform in the United States. The Marshall Project has been compared with the

Innocence Project Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent futu ...

, but distinguishes itself because its focus is not merely on innocent people ensnared by the criminal justice system but also on guilty people whose rights to due process, fair trial, and proportionate punishment are violated.

Awards and honors

In 2016, The Marshall Project and partner

won the

Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting The Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting has been presented since 1998, for a distinguished example of explanatory reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing and clear p ...

for "

An Unbelievable Story of Rape "An Unbelievable Story of Rape" is a 2015 article about a series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado that occurred between 2008 and 2011, and the subsequent police investigations. It was a collaboration between two American ...

" described as "a startling examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims", as well as a

George Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...

for the same piece. In 2019, this piece was adapted into the

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

series '' Unbelievable''. In 2017, The Marshall Project won a National Magazine Award for general excellence in the category of Literature, Science and Politics. This was the website's first National Magazine Award. Also in 2017, The Marshall Project was named as a collaborator (alongside

) when ''

This American Life ''This American Life'' (''TAL'') is an American monthly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internatio ...

'' won a Peabody Award for "Anatomy of Doubt". In 2018, The Marshall Project was awarded a national Edward R. Murrow Award for "Overall Excellence" for a small digital newsroom. It also won the award for General Excellence in Online Journalism from

Online News Association The Online News Association (ONA), founded in 1999, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Washington D.C., United States. It is the world's largest association of digital journalists, with more than 2,000 members. The majority of ON ...

. Its 2017 documentary series "We Are Witnesses" was nominated for the 39th Annual

News & Documentary Emmy Award The News & Documentary Emmy Awards, or News & Documentary Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sci ...

. Its 2019 installment of the "We Are Witnesses" series was nominated for the 41st Annual News & Documentary Emmy Award for "Outstanding New Approaches" in the documentary category. In 2021, the Marshall Project was awarded a

Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting The Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting is an award for journalists administered by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. The program was launched in 1991, with the goal of exposing examples of ...

for reporting on conditions in the Mississippi penal system. The Marshall Project was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting in 2021 for a yearlong investigation into injuries caused by police dog bites. The prize was shared with AL.com, IndyStar and the Invisible Institute.

References

External links