ProPublicans,

Unencumbered by White House directives, the journalists at ProPublica are already working hard on transition planning. Our reporters are thinking about new things to investigate in 2021 during the administration of Joe Biden, and our list will surely involve some federal agencies.

The essential element of investigative reporting is that we examine abuses of power and betrayals of public trust by those in power. For the past four years, that has meant an intense focus on President Donald Trump, his administration and his family business, prompting critics to dismiss ProPublica as a left-leaning news organization bent on bringing down one party.

In the coming months and years, I predict that caricature will recede a bit (it never goes away) when we expose missteps, misconduct and worse by the Biden administration. If President Biden launches a relief program and it goes as badly as the Obama administration’s efforts to keep people in their homes after the 2008 mortgage meltdown, we will cover it closely, just as we did then. Should massive numbers of people lacking health insurance overwhelm the government’s systems for enrolling people, we will be there, just as we were for the epic fail of healthcare.gov in the first days of Obamacare. Based on my decades of writing and editing stories about Washington, it is predictable, indeed inevitable, that one or more government agencies will fall short. If regulators or prosecutors cut a less-than-tough deal with a financial institution accused of wrongdoing, as happened more than once in the Obama years (and the Trump administration), we will be writing about it.

The past four years of open warfare in which the president and his allies have repeatedly attacked journalists as “enemies of the people” and treated them like human piñatas has taken some toll on the collective psyche of the news business. Understandably, a lot of reporters are looking forward to a new era in which the national leadership views the press as an essential, if sometimes annoying, aspect of governing in a democracy.

That wish will probably be realized to some extent. But I would remind my colleagues that the Obama years were marked by a fair amount of friction between the press and government officials. Obama arrived promising a new era of openness in public records and then presided over years in which agencies slow-walked and rejected countless reasonable requests for documents. ProPublica reporters who cover climate well remember the Obama-era insistence that a minder from the PR shop attend any interview between a reporter and a government scientist.

Here’s another prediction: More than once in the next four years, we will write a story that Drudge, Fox or other sites perceived to lean right will gleefully pick up because it embarrasses the president. I certainly hope that’s the case and will feel we’re not doing our job if that doesn’t happen.

We have spent a great deal of time covering the intersection of the government and the Trump family businesses over the past four years through our stories and the “Trump Inc.” podcast with WNYC. It’s worth noting that we have also already done a detailed story on the business entanglements of Jim Biden, the president-elect’s older brother. I think it’s a fair guess that if the oft-mentioned Hunter Biden or any of Joe Biden’s family members do any business with the government, that fact will not go unnoticed by whistleblowers, congressional investigators or reporters.

In my observation, people who pursue investigative reporting as a career tend to be less partisan than reformers who believe society would function better if only the voters knew the full facts about a particular event or issue. That’s why coverage of a Democratic administration is not materially different from a Republican one. We go where the data leads us.

So yes, it’s a new day but the basics of our work aren’t changing. As we have for more than a decade, we remain focused on accountability reporting, looking for stories that can spur change whoever they involve.

There’s an irreverent explanation of how news organizations decide what to investigate in the 1994 movie “The Paper” that’s always given me a laugh. The film, directed by Ron Howard, is a lightly fictionalized version of life at New York City’s legendary tabloid newspapers.

At one point, the star columnist, a Jimmy Breslin-type played by Randy Quaid, is confronted in a bar by the parking commissioner, depicted by mustachioed Jason Alexander wielding a gun. The columnist has just written a story that eviscerates the parking department, and the commissioner asks him why he wrote such mean things. Alexander, using R-rated language, demands to know why he was put in the hot seat. “I don’t need you to tell me the parking department is fucked up. I know it’s fucked up. It was fucked up when I got there. Why’d you have to pick on me?”

Waving the gun, he lists his complaints. “You called me a pointless bureaucrat.”

“You made my wife cry when she reads the newspaper.”

The columnist offers some snarky replies, prompting the commissioner to cock the gun.

“Why, why me?” he laments.

Facing death, the columnist finally offers an honest answer.

“You work for the city. It was your turn.”

I promise we will have better reasons than that for the stories we write. But, truthfully, as of January there will be a new bunch of officials making life-changing decisions in Washington. And it will be their turn.

Steve