The term muckraker<span> was used in the </span>Progressive Era<span> to characterize reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt. They typically had large audiences in some popular magazines. In the USA, the modern term is </span>investigative journalism<span> — it has different and more pejorative connotations in British English — and investigative journalists in the USA today are often informally called 'muckrakers'. Muckraking magazines—notably </span>McClure's<span> of publisher </span>S. S. McClure<span>—took on corporate monopolies and </span>political machines<span> while trying to raise public awareness and anger at urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, prostitution, and </span>child labor<span>.</span>