Vox and the Center for Public Integrity announce the launch of “System Failure”

Introduction

Vox and the Center for Public Integrity today announced a six-month partnership and the launch of a new series, System Failure. The joint project will look at the Trump administration’s moves to roll back the regulatory powers of federal agencies and how that has impacted public health, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The series launches with three in-depth reports: 

• Trump’s favorite weapon in the coronavirus fight: Deregulation
• How Trump gave insurance companies free rein to sell bad health plans
• Trump’s Justice Department has a powerful tool to fight police abuse. It refuses to use it.

“Deregulation can sound like a Beltway term, but it has real consequences for Americans around the country,” says Lauren Williams, SVP & Editor in Chief, Vox. “It’s easy to get distracted by the horserace during an election year, but this reporting is essential to show our audience what’s really at stake when we cast our vote.”

“At a critical time for our country, and with a historic election approaching, it’s great to see major news organizations collaborate and pool resources to uncover and explain issues that have significant bearing on people’s lives and the way our democracy functions,” said Matt DeRienzo, editor-in-chief at the Center for Public Integrity.

The wide-ranging and in-depth reporting on these issues are the result of the combined strengths of the two newsrooms: Public Integrity’s data-driven investigative journalism, which has garnered the nonprofit newsroom some of journalism’s highest honors including Pulitzers, Murrows, and an Emmy, and Vox’s award-winning explanatory journalism, policy expertise, and expansive reach. Vox and Public Integrity have previously worked together across a number of important issues including tax policy, welfare benefits, and federal flood insurance. 

Large, multi-scale newsroom collaborations are increasingly the norm, with newsrooms pooling resources to create impactful journalism. This year, Harvard’s Shorenstein Center awarded the prestigious Goldsmith Prize to a trio of newsrooms—USA Today, Public Integrity and Arizona Republic—that jointly produced a series that exposed the hidden hand of lobbyists and special interest groups in writing laws across America’s 50 states.

You can read the latest coverage and learn more about System Failure here.

ABOUT PUBLIC INTEGRITY

The Center for Public Integrity is one of America’s oldest, Pulitzer-winning nonprofit, nonpartisan newsrooms investigating democracy, power and privilege. Public Integrity’s reporting focuses on the influence of money and the impact of inequality on our society using the power of data and the Freedom of Information Act to produce journalism that has changed hundreds of laws and policies, forced the federal and state governments to release critical public information, and held corporations to account for abuses of power.

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ABOUT VOX

Vox explains the news. In a world of too much information and too little context – Vox helps people understand the facts, the issues that matter, and the ideas that are shaping our country and the wider world beyond. Vox makes important issues clear and comprehensible, empowering its audience to shape the world in which they live. A Vox Media network, Vox is also home to influential verticals including Recode, The Goods, Future Perfect, and The Highlight; a robust podcast lineup featuring “Today, Explained,” “The Weeds,” “The Ezra Klein Show,” “Switched on Pop,” and more; and award-winning video production with popular series like “Missing Chapter” and “Earworm” on YouTube, “Glad You Asked” for YouTube Originals, “Answered” on Quibi, and “Explained” on Netflix. 

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