Charles Ornstein is a senior writer for ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

Ornstein, in collaboration with Tracy Weber, was a lead reporter on a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times titled "The Troubles at King/Drew" hospital that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for public service in 2005. Ornstein reported for the Times starting in 2001, in the last five years largely in partnership with Weber. Earlier, Ornstein spent five years as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. He is vice president of the Association of Health Care Journalists and a former Kaiser Family Foundation media fellow. ProPublica has a staff of 32 independent journalists in its Manhattan newsroom. It considers itself the largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States. It seeks to stimulate positive change by uncovering unsavory practices in order to stimulate reform. It describes itself as non-partisan, non-ideological and impartial.