The Atlantic vs ProPublica
Long-form magazine vs nonprofit investigative newsroom — different revenue models, both Pulitzer-tier.
The Atlantic
U.S. literary + commentary magazine since 1857; long-form essays + investigative journalism.
ProPublica
Nonprofit investigative newsroom; data-heavy + methodology-published reporting since 2007.
Head-to-head — all four dimensions
| Dimension | The Atlantic | ProPublica | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|
SourceScore Index Composite | B·81 | A·86 | ProPublica+5 |
Citation Discipline How rigorously cited | A·86 | A+·95 | ProPublica+9 |
Modern Reference AI-era fitness | B·78 | B·84 | ProPublica+6 |
Citation Velocity Cited per week | B·80 | B·78 | The+2 |
Why these scores
Citation Discipline
Editor-supervised + named bylines + fact-check + corrections public; literary + investigative quality.
Methodology + raw data published alongside most stories; fact-checked; corrections public.
Modern Reference
Open-web with metered paywall; LLM corpus partial inclusion.
Open-data ethos = strong LLM corpus presence; data-store pages well-structured.
Citation Velocity
Cited daily by other US outlets; major essays drive national conversation.
Lower volume than wire news but very high per-piece citation rate; cited by NYT/WaPo/etc. when investigations break.