(The Center Square) – A Republican motion to invest $6 million into Youth Apprenticeship Grants in the 2025-27 Wisconsin biennial state budget was adopted 12-4 by the Joint Finance Committee on Tuesday.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin ranked 22nd in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s new labor policy rankings.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the state Department of Tourism again announced numbers from marketing firm Tourism Economics saying the state had record economic impact from tourism last year.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s director for Medicaid says more than 60,000 people will lose health care coverage in the state if the Republican-backed reconciliation package isn’t changed.

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Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom that uses journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected, seeks an audience and social media producer to help develop and execute our strategy for “meeting people where they are” – ensuring that our journalism serves audiences who are less engaged with legacy news formats.

The producer will manage the development, design and distribution of multimedia journalism through social media channels and will play a key role in shaping how our newsrooms think about, understand and meet the needs of diverse audiences across Wisconsin. The right candidate will be a strong communicator and a curious, critical observer of the changing media landscape. The producer will be excited by the challenges of “interpreting” news and information into different formats and take an organized and methodical approach to testing assumptions and developing insights. 

The producer will collaborate with editorial and business colleagues in Milwaukee, Madison and northeast Wisconsin and must live within commuting distance of one or more of these areas.

Job duties

The audience and social media producer will:

• Contribute to our audience growth by developing and executing platform-specific content strategies to reach people who are less engaged with legacy news formats.

• Work with the editors of Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service to fully integrate social media into the editorial planning process.

• Collaborate with editors, reporters and community ambassadors to plan and execute social media outreach and distribution as part of wider audience development strategies for specific beats and projects.

• Collaborate with beat reporters to “interpret” long-form articles and investigations for lower literacy audiences and collaborate with visual journalists to develop original and repackaged reporting for social media audiences and platforms.

• Collect, monitor and analyze data from a variety of sources to develop insights about the relevance, resonance and impact of our journalism, and communicate these insights to journalists and editors to help keep editorial priorities aligned with audience needs.

• Be curious about how information-seeking behaviors are evolving alongside a constantly changing media landscape – and be ready to bring observations and insights to discussions about our wider editorial and business strategies.

Required qualifications: The ideal candidate will bring a public service mindset and a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisan journalism ethics, including a commitment to abide by Wisconsin Watch’s ethics policies. 

More specifically, we’re looking for a multimedia producer who: 

• Has experience building audiences on social media platforms.
• Has excellent communication skills and a keen eye for tone and detail.
• Has visual and design skills (e.g., Canva, Flourish and app-based video editors).
• Understands how to use data to develop a news product or service.
• Can confidently prioritize and manage multiple projects and deadlines.

We know that there will be great candidates who might not check all these boxes or who hold important skills we haven’t listed. Don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities.

Salary and benefits: The salary range is $45,000 – $55,000 depending on experience. 

Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience. Wisconsin Watch offers competitive benefits, including generous vacation (five weeks), a retirement fund contribution, paid sick days, paid family and caregiver leave, subsidized medical and dental premiums, vision coverage, and more.

Deadline: For best consideration, apply by June 27.

To apply: Please submit a PDF of your resume and answer some brief questions in this application form.

1. How do you use social media and how has that changed over the past several years? 
2. What does your daily news diet look like and how has that changed over time? 
3. Please provide 2-3 examples of news organizations, independent journalists or influencers who you think are successfully leveraging social media or other non-traditional formats or channels to deliver news and information. Briefly describe why you chose these examples.

If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Cecilia Dobbs, director of audience development, at cdobbs@wisconsinwatch.org.

Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We are an equal-opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.

About Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service

Founded in 2009, Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing nonpartisan journalism that makes the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. We believe that access to local representative news is critical to a healthy democracy and to finding solutions to the most pressing problems of everyday life. Under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella, we have three independent news divisions: a statewide investigative newsroom, a regional collaboration in northeast Wisconsin called the NEW News Lab and the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS). All three divisions maintain their unique reporting areas and together are positioned to grow and serve our communities with greater efficiency and impact.

NNS was founded in 2011 as a mission-driven newsroom that reports on and celebrates Milwaukee’s central city neighborhoods, specifically the city’s Black and Latinx communities. Through NNS’ reporting, website, e-newsletters and News414 texting service, we cover the ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connect readers with resources and serve as a watchdog for our audience. NNS, formerly a part of Marquette University, and Wisconsin Watch have a long history of collaboration. In 2024, NNS moved its administrative home and merged under the Wisconsin Watch umbrella. Together, Wisconsin Watch’s statewide team and NNS’ reporters collaborate to produce statewide investigative stories while highlighting issues impacting communities in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin Watch seeks audience and social media producer is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Snowflakes fell last February as bundled-up women walked into a downtown Green Bay coffee shop. Inside, Third Space Green Bay was celebrating its one-year anniversary as a group that creates a gathering space for local queer, Black and Indigenous residents and other people of color.  

Soft rhythm and blues — from SZA to Solange — filled the room as the group’s three co-founders led a Sunday morning clothes-mending and craft event that promised “healing through creativity.” 

In launching Third Space, Jasmine Gordon, Ivy McGee and Sarah Titus aim to help people with a range of backgrounds feel at home in a city that’s 70% white and in a state where less than 4% of people identify as LGBTQ+.

The women met at St. Norbert College, a Catholic liberal arts institution in De Pere, just outside of Green Bay. McGee grew up in De Pere, and Titus, a native Minnesotan, moved to Green Bay in 2008. They had worked together for years as librarians at the college when Gordon, a St. Norbert alum, became the library’s community engagement coordinator in 2021. Seeing a gap to fill on campus, the women rolled out library programming that engaged LGBTQ+ students and people of color. 

Events like “The Transperience,” an art installation in partnership with the Bay Area Council on Gender Diversity and the Trans Artist Collaborative, and a farmers market featuring more than  40 Black-owned businesses prompted feedback from residents who said they had never felt so seen, loved or cared for. 

“We would have people come up to us afterwards expressing, ‘Oh my gosh, I never knew I needed this,’” Titus said. 

But St. Norbert’s climate of inclusion changed over the years, the women said. In fall 2024, for instance, the college changed its gender policy, aligning with Catholic church guidelines recognizing only two genders: male and female. While leaders said the college remained committed to supporting people of diverse backgrounds, many students and staff said the change sent a different message. 

At the same time, Gordon, McGee and Titus envisioned a larger, independent project to promote inclusion across Green Bay — beyond the confines of campus.

Leaving their jobs at a college that faced financial turmoil, they launched Third Space to realize that vision.  

“We saw an opportunity and a responsibility to separate ourselves from the institution and develop something that felt more aligned with our core values, and that was including folks from all different walks of life regardless of who they love or what color their skin is or how they identify,” McGee said. 

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third space” in 1989, with home being someone’s “first place” and work as a “second place.” Third spaces are where people publicly gather informally, such as coffee shops, restaurants, coworking spaces and libraries. Third Space Green Bay seeks to create places for people to “just be,” its founders said.  

Its programs are free and “open and welcoming to folks that are on the margins,” McGee said. 

Third Space isn’t the only local group serving LGBTQ+ populations. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Pride Center provides resources and holds events. But Third Space is rare in that it also intentionally serves Black and Indigenous residents, alongside other people of color. 

“When we were thinking of how we wanted this organization to exist, we were really thinking about it as a coalition,” Titus said, adding that the group is “building and intertwining” multiple communities that are often marginalized locally. 

Third Space, which filed to become a nonprofit in April 2024, has hosted more than 10 hours of community programming and raised more than $11,000 in grants and $6,700 in donations. 

Earlier this year, Third Space hosted an International Women’s Day pop-up shop that included a poetry writing workshop and a live performance from a local poet.

McGee said joining other women in that space made her feel her organization was “absolutely on the right track” and helped her imagine what it could do with a permanent location.  

The trio of founders said they are building the scaffolding for Third Space’s future. Until they secure a permanent location in downtown Green Bay, they’ll continue borrowing spaces from like-minded people in the community. 

At the February anniversary event, Essence Wilks, a Milwaukee native who recently moved to Green Bay, and Taiyana Plummer, a Green Bay native, learned about Third Space after walking into the coffee shop in search of matcha tea. Plummer said she and Wilks had just been discussing a shortage of inclusive gathering spaces in Green Bay. 

“Growing up here, especially when I was younger, it was harder to find people similar to me or spaces where I felt welcomed or heard and seen,” Plummer said. “So seeing this was very nice and made me feel very comfortable and just really excited for what’s moving forward with Third Space.”

Three women build a ‘third space’ for Green Bay residents who have felt left out is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A prehistoric digestive time capsule has been unearthed in Australia: plant fossils found inside a sauropod dinosaur offer the first definitive glimpse into what these giant creatures actually ate. The remarkably preserved gut contents reveal that sauropods were massive, indiscriminate plant-eaters who swallowed leaves, conifer shoots, and even flowering plants without chewing relying on their gut microbes to break it all down.

Some volcanoes erupt with little to no warning, posing serious risks to nearby communities and air traffic. A study of Alaska's Veniaminof volcano reveals how specific internal conditions like slow magma flow and warm chamber walls can create these so-called "stealthy eruptions."

Physicists at the University of Oxford have set a new global benchmark for the accuracy of controlling a single quantum bit, achieving the lowest-ever error rate for a quantum logic operation--just 0.000015%, or one error in 6.7 million operations. This record-breaking result represents nearly an order of magnitude improvement over the previous benchmark, set by the same research group a decade ago.

A violent solar eruption on May 31 launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) hurtling toward Earth, triggering a rare G4-level geomagnetic storm alert. Captured in real-time by U.S. Naval Research Laboratory instruments, this cosmic blast has the potential to disrupt satellites, communications, and military systems.

Acetaminophen may be doing more than just dulling pain in your brain it could be stopping it before it even starts. Scientists at Hebrew University have discovered that a metabolite of the drug, AM404, blocks pain signals right at their source by shutting down specific sodium channels in pain-sensing nerves. This radically shifts our understanding of how this common medication works and opens a door to new, more targeted painkillers that might eliminate side effects like numbness or weakness.

Creatine is gaining recognition far beyond its roots in athletic performance. Once seen as a gym-only supplement, it's now understood to play a vital role in cellular energy, cognitive function, and healthy aging. From boosting memory and reducing fatigue to preserving muscle mass over time, creatine is emerging as a powerful tool for everyday wellness. Despite persistent myths about bloating or safety risks, a vast body of research shows it's both safe and effective for nearly everyone especially those who don t get enough from diet alone.

Neanderthals may have trekked thousands of miles across Eurasia much faster than we ever imagined. New computer simulations suggest they used river valleys like natural highways to cross daunting landscapes during warmer climate windows. These findings not only help solve a long-standing archaeological mystery but also point to the likelihood of encounters and interbreeding with other ancient human species like the Denisovans.

After millions of years of evolutionary isolation, Madagascar developed an unparalleled array of wildlife, and recent research has uncovered an unsung ecological hero: the lizard. Though often dismissed in studies of seed dispersal, lizards in Madagascar have proven to be vital agents of endozoochory, consuming fruits and spreading the seeds of over 20 plant species. Surprisingly, their seed choices differ from those of the dominant lemurs, suggesting an unrecognized ecological role. Even more striking, these lizards persist in degraded environments where larger frugivores can t, hinting at their crucial function in restoring Madagascar s forests.

Bumblebee queens don t work nonstop. UC Riverside scientists discovered that queens take strategic reproductive breaks early in colony formation likely to conserve energy and increase the chance of survival. These pauses aren t due to stress but are a built-in response to brood development stages. The study shows queen behavior is far more flexible and dynamic than previously thought, potentially offering new insights into how to protect declining bee populations.

A team of international astronomers has uncovered what may be a gas giant planet forming around a distant young star. Using the powerful Very Large Telescope in Chile, they captured dazzling near-infrared images of a spiral-armed disk, matching theoretical predictions of how young planets shape their environment. With structures extending beyond the scale of our solar system and evidence of planet-driven disturbances, the system could provide vital clues to how planetary systems, including our own, emerge.

Planets may begin forming much earlier than scientists once believed during the final stages of a star s birth, not afterward. This bold new model, backed by simulations from researchers at SwRI, could solve a long-standing mystery: why so many exoplanet systems have tight clusters of similarly sized planets orbiting close to their stars. These compact systems seem to emerge naturally if planets start forming amid the swirling chaos of gas and dust still feeding the star.

Hundreds took to the streets of Milwaukee Tuesday night to call out recent arrests and raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The post Hundreds march in Milwaukee to protest recent ICE arrests, Trump’s use of military appeared first on WPR.

Republican state lawmakers have rejected a plan that would have created a new security force for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, arguing other police who protect the state Capitol can handle the job on their own.

The post Republicans reject funding for Wisconsin Supreme Court security appeared first on WPR.

Republicans representing Wisconsin in Congress are defending President Donald Trump's decision to deploy troops to Los Angeles amid protests there against federal immigration

The post Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation reacts as Trump deploys Marines, National Guard to California amid protests appeared first on WPR.