The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) was an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization. CPI's stated mission was "to counter the corrosive effects of inequality by holding powerful interests accountable and equipping the public with knowledge to drive change." It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, and in 2023, the Edward R. Murrow Award for General Excellence.
Mass layoffs in 2024 saw almost the entirety of CPI's workforce dismissed. In March 2025, CPI announced that it had officially ceased operations and was seeking to turn its archives over to the Project on Government Oversight.
History
1989–2004 CPI was founded on March 30, 1989, by Charles Lewis, a former producer for ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes. By the late 1980s Lewis observed that fewer resources—time, money and space—were being invested in investigative reporting in the United States by established news outlets and major publications. All three had grown dissatisfied with what was being done in the name of investigative journalism by established news organizations. They chose the name Public Integrity as a way of underscoring the "ultimate purpose of investigative journalism" which is "to hold those in power accountable and to inform the public about significant distortions of the truth."
In May 1990, Lewis used the money he had raised and his house as collateral to open an office in Washington, D.C. In its first year, the CPI's budget was $200,000. In 1996, CPI launched its first website, although CPI did not begin to publish reports online until 1999.
In August 2000 the CPI published a story entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough: State Department Questioned Deal With Firm Linked to Russian Mob", in which the authors argued that while Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton—from 1995 to 2000—the company received "$3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans".
In 2001, Global Integrity, an international project, was launched to systematically track and report on openness, accountability and the rule of law in various countries. It has since been incorporated independently.
In 2004, CPI's The Buying of the President book was on The New York Times Best Seller list for three months.
2005–2007 Lewis served as CPI's director until January 2005. As of his departure, CPI had published 14 books and more than 250 investigative reports. In 2005, CPI had a staff of 40 full-time Washington-based reporters who partnered with a network of writers and editors in more than 25 countries. Years later, Lewis said he decided to leave his position at CPI because "he didn't want it to become 'an institution that was Chuck's Excellent Adventure". Lewis' departure surprised and upset philanthropists Herb and Marion Sandler, who had partially funded the CPI's activities.
In December 2004, CPI's board of directors chose television journalist Roberta Baskin as Lewis's successor. Baskin came to CPI after directing consumer investigations for ABC News's 20/20 and serving as Washington correspondent for PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers.
In September 2005, CPI announced that it had discovered a pattern of plagiarism in the past work of a staff writer for CPI's 2002 book Capitol Offenders. CPI responded by hiring a copy editor to review all work, issuing a revised version of Capitol Offenders, sending letters of apology to all reporters whose work was plagiarized, authoring a new corrections policy, and returning an award the book received from Investigative Reporters and Editors. He went on to work for a political consulting firm that specializes in opposition research. In March 2007, he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the center's official version "is not accurate in telling the full story of why I left the center," but did not elaborate.
Baskin led the organization until May 24, 2006.
Baskin was followed by Wendell Rawls Jr., who was named interim executive director. Rawls had previously served as the center's managing director, appointed to that post by Baskin on December 19, 2005. He joined CPI in August 2005.
2007–2023 In 2007, Rawls was succeeded by William Buzenberg, a vice president at American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio. Buzenberg was first interviewed for the position in 2004 during the hiring process that ultimately led to the selection of his predecessor, Roberta Baskin.
According to a report by Lewis, "the number of full-time staff was reduced by one-third" in early 2007. By December 2007, the number of full-time staff had dropped to 25, down from a high of 40. At the time, Buzenberg said "It's a great, great place, but I will not mislead you... [Lewis] quite frankly left the center in great shape financially, but when you have a visionary who leaves, how do you continue? 'With difficulty' is the answer."
Baskin publicly disputed Buzenberg's claims in a letter to the American Journalism Review where she wrote, "contrary to the statement from current Executive Director Bill Buzenberg, the center was not left 'in great shape financially' by my predecessor. Much of the money raised during the year prior to my tenure was used to offset budget overruns on several previous projects. I replaced our director of development and made fundraising my number one priority, much as Buzenberg has done. As a rookie fundraiser, I take pride in the fact that I was able to raise millions of dollars."
In 2008, Lewis reflected on the transition period following his resignation and said, "I regret what happened to my staff and the condition of the Center. It's no secret it had a less than enviable few years. But that's one of the reasons I thought it was important to leave. I had founded it and run it for 15 years, and at some point the founder does have to leave the building...I don't regret it, I think it was important that I left, but I do feel badly about the hardship it brought to people I think the world of."
In 2010, The Huffington Post Investigative Fund merged into the CPI, and eight Huffington Post journalists moved to CPI.
In 2011, CPI eliminated 10 staff positions in order to compensate for a $2 million budget shortfall. Buzenberg and other senior staffers also took salary cuts. CPI board chairman Bruce Finzen said the budget would be "reduced between $2 million and $3 million, more like $2.5 million. The budget for next year will be in the 6 to 7 million range."
In April 2011, with support from the Knight Foundation, CPI launched iWatchnews.org as its main investigative reporting website. In August 2012, CPI stopped using iWatchnews.org and returned to its original domain.
Buzenberg stepped down from CPI at the end of 2014, at which time Peter Bale was named CEO. In November 2016, Bale resigned from the center to "pursue other international media opportunities" and John Dunbar assumed the role of chief executive officer.
In 2019, Susan Smith Richardson was named chief executive officer, becoming the first African-American CEO in the center's history.
2024–2025
In February 2024, CEO Paul Cheung resigned. The board also acted to eliminate the position of editor-in-chief, a post that had been held by Matt DeRienzo.
CPI had a revenue goal of $6 million for 2023, and fell about $2.5 million short of that. According to the New York Times, this shortfall created a situation of financial peril that threatened "to extinguish a newsroom of about 30 journalists that has watchdogged powerful institutions for decades." Due to the organization's financial difficulties, CPI considered merging with a competitor or shutting down.
In March 2024, CPI laid off 11 newsroom employees. That same month, Richard Tofel, the former president of ProPublica, wrote a Substack piece entitled "What Went Wrong at the Center for Public Integrity?" in which he discussed "what seems likely to be the end, one way or another, of CPI." Tofel identified considerable turnover at the top of the organization, cultural shortcomings of its board of directors, and strategic missteps as the three major factors which led to the organization's demise. In May 2024, a mass layoff saw almost all CPI workers lose their jobs.
CPI's last major piece was co-published in June 2024 and the organization had no staff by November 2024. In March 2025, CPI announced it had officially ceased operations and was in talks to give its archive to the Project on Government Oversight.
Organizational structure
Funding
In its first year, CPI's budget was reported to be $200,000. In 2010, CPI had $9.2 million in revenue and $7.7 million in expenses. By 2022, annual revenues had declined to $5 million.
CPI reported receiving foundation support from a number of foundations, including the Sunlight Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Foundations, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Barbra Streisand Foundation reported that it had funded CPI.
In July 2014, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation donated $2.8 million to CPI to launch a new project focused on state campaign finance. According to the International Business Times, "as CPI was negotiating the Arnold grant, Arnold's name was absent from a CPI report on pension politics". Arnold has spent at least $10 million on a campaign to roll back pension benefits for public workers.
Board of directors
As of March 2025, CPI's board of directors included chairman Wesley Lowery and members Jamaal Glenn, Olivier Kamanda, Jennifer 8. Lee, Sue Suh, Daniel Suleiman, and Andres Torres. Emeritus board members include Charles Lewis and Craig Newmark. In March 2025, Lowery stepped down as board chair amid allegations that he made inappropriate sexual comments and unwanted sexual advances at his full time job at American University. At the same time, CPI announced that it had officially ceased operations.
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
In 1997, CPI launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), based in Washington, D.C. In 2016, the ICIJ spun off from CPI and became its own nonprofit due to financial difficulties with CPI.
Panama Papers
In April 2016, the ICIJ made headlines worldwide with the announcement that it and the German newspaper had received a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents from a secret source, created by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca. The Panama Papers provided detailed information on more than 214,000 offshore companies, including the identities of shareholders and directors. The documents named the leaders of five countries — Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates — as well as government officials, close relatives and close associates of various heads of government of more than 40 other countries, including Brazil, China, France, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Malta, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Syria and the United Kingdom.
The ICIJ and received the Panama Papers in 2015 and distributed them to about 400 journalists at 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries. The first news reports based on the set, along with 149 of the documents themselves, were published on April 3, 2016. Among other planned disclosures, the full list of companies is to be released in early May 2016.
Ideology A 2012 The New York Times editorial described the CPI as a "nonpartisan watchdog group".
In relation to a story in February 1996, CPI was characterized as a "liberal group" by the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a progressive media watchdog, has described CPI as "progressive."
Reports