About InvestigateWest

Our Mission
As a nonprofit, collaborative newsroom, InvestigateWest’s mission is to produce high-impact investigative journalism that holds power accountable, exposes injustice and empowers underserved communities across the Pacific Northwest to create a more informed, just and equitable society.

Our vision is one of a society where all communities are empowered by fearless investigative journalism that drives systemic change, strengthens democracy, and fosters greater accountability and justice.

Our History
InvestigateWest was founded in 2009 by former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters and editors after the paper stopped publishing. It was a critical time for the news industry — “Papers Facing Worst Year for Ad Revenue,” declared the New York Times in the summer of 2008 — and thousands upon thousands of reporters lost their jobs across America. InvestigateWest was part of a pioneering group of news organizations created at that time to preserve public-service journalism through a nonprofit model relying on reader support and donations rather than advertising. There are now more than 400 news nonprofits across the country, building on the groundbreaking work of the early trendsetters like VTDigger in Vermont, inewsource in California, The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and InvestigateWest.

Track Record of Impact
Over the years, our small newsroom has generated massive impact, including a dozen new state laws to protect workers, the environment and vulnerable children. Visit Our Impact to learn about more how InvestigateWest is driving policy across the region.

What We Cover
In short, we spotlight injustice in the Pacific Northwest — exposing corruption, wrongdoing, abuses of power and society’s broken systems. We focus on the most urgent issues of our time: social justice, climate and the environment, public health, government and corporate accountability, democracy, extremism, youth, labor and more. We prioritize underserved communities and areas where our work can have the most impact.

One thing we avoid at all costs: duplicating stories that have already been written. Everything we publish should provide substantial new insights about something important. It answers: What’s wrong? Who or what is responsible? What needs to change?

Our Staff
Our local reporters and editors are posted across the Pacific Northwest and aim to spotlight the region’s underserved communities. Many on the team have two decades or more of experience and over that time they have published a substantial body of change-inspiring work. See Our Staff for more detail.

Commitment to Collaboration
InvestigateWest is in the process of building a dream team of aggressive and seasoned journalists driven to expose injustice, hold power to account and spark change through rigorous, evidence-based reporting. Meanwhile, we believe that the best way to serve local communities across the Northwest is to wholeheartedly embrace collaboration and partner with other local outlets to surface important investigative stories that would otherwise go untold. For more, visit Collaborate with Us.

Our Reach and Distribution
InvestigateWest’s articles are published on our website — free to everyone, including other news outlets — and are regularly reprinted by dozens of local outlets across Washington, Oregon and Idaho. We also partner with national publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Grist, Politico, The Guardian and The Atlantic. Meanwhile, we reach thousands of additional readers with our free newsletter; sign up here.

Ownership/Organization
InvestigateWest is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, overseen by a volunteer board of directors, and we rely heavily on donations to fund our work. Donations to InvestigateWest are tax-deductible.

Financial Reports
Find recent tax returns: Form 990, 2023; Form 990, 2022; Form 990, 2021; Form 990, 2020. Independent financial reviews: 2023; 2022; 2021; 2020. The IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter. And our profile on Candid.

Our Supporters
More than half of our revenue comes from regional and national foundations. The rest comes from individual donors who value the essential role watchdog journalism plays in a healthy democracy. For more, visit How We're Funded and Ways to Give.

Our Founders
The initial idea for InvestigateWest was conceived, as so many good ideas are, inside a stressed-out newsroom, in this case, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, not long after the PI’s reporters and editors learned in 2009 that the future of the paper was in jeopardy. Rather than walk away, these journalists wanted to build something new. It then fell to six co-founders — Robert McClure, Rita Hibbard, Carol Smith, Kristen Millares Young, Daniel Lathrop and Lewis Kamb — to take the idea and make it real.

For more, take a look back with this video from our 10th anniversary in 2019.

Facts, Fairness and Verification
We seek to report the truth and to base our reporting on the most rigorous factual standards, while holding the powerful accountable and minimizing harm. Reporters and editors seek to document our stories deeply, checking facts with care, paying attention to context and complexity, striving to confirm information in multiple ways, and seeking deeper explanations that underlie policies and decisions affecting the public. Reporters serve as the front line of fact-checking, and InvestigateWest applies multiple layers of editing to each published story, working to ensure that they are accurate and fair.

Fairness requires thorough fact-gathering, inclusion of relevant context and substantive arguments, transparency about the sources of our information, and treating the subjects of our coverage with dignity and respect. In cases where individuals or organizations are subject to criticism within a story, we make every effort to provide them with the opportunity to respond in detail and to reflect in an even-handed manner their best defense within the story.

Professional Affiliations
InvestigateWest is a founding member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and also belongs to LION Publishers, IRE, the Rural News Network and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Social Media
Follow us on X, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, Threads and LinkedIn.

Newsletters
Sign up for our Watchdog Weekly newsletter to get the best of InvestigateWest in your inbox.

Annual Magazines
Flip through the digital editions: 2024-25, 2023-24 and 2022-23.