Wisconsin Watch has joined forces with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS) to launch an exciting new chapter in which we work together to bring communities the news and information most important to them.

Our partnership has been years in the making. After working together for several years on news projects, we began teaming up to raise key fundraising support that will allow both operations to flourish. Our partnership has yielded many innovative projects, including the News414 text reporting system, where we send vital news to folks who can also text questions and tips to us.

Now we’re working to build a brighter future for local news in Wisconsin upon that foundation of collaboration.

NNS will continue to operate as an independent newsroom under its founding mission to serve, empower and engage the city of Milwaukee with community-focused news. The entire NNS staff has joined Wisconsin Watch, including Ron Smith, executive director, who will be enshrined next month in the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame; Tannette Elie, managing editor, recently named president of the Milwaukee chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists; and PrincessSafiya Byers, a finalist for the prestigious national Loeb Awards for her collaboration with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the challenges residents face when out-of-state investors buy rental properties in distressed neighborhoods.

We’re excited that the American Journalism Project (AJP) believes in our mission and has invested in our partnership. In 2021, Wisconsin Watch and NNS shared a capacity-building grant from the American Journalism Project, the nation’s first venture philanthropy dedicated to nonprofit local news. AJP has increased its investment to support our strategic growth in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. 

“Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service are vital to the future of local news in Wisconsin. We are proud to partner with them on this strategic merger,” said Jason Alcorn, vice president for growth investments at AJP. “Together, they will not only expand their reach but also strengthen their organization and enhance their ability to serve the public with high-quality, trustworthy journalism that empowers communities and holds institutions accountable.”

Our purpose at Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service is to ask questions our neighbors want answered, understand obstacles they’re struggling to overcome, discover wrongs they hope to right – and bring remedies to light. This is how we solve problems and strengthen communities in our democracy.

Both organizations rose to fill growing gaps in local coverage as commercial news outlets were forced to reduce costs after new technologies changed the way people shop, advertise and get their news. Given the loss of reporters covering local government and community life, we must nurture collaborative efforts, where newsrooms work together to gather the resources necessary to tell the stories that matter most. We need to use every local reporter we’ve still got in Wisconsin and build from there.

As a local nonprofit with a mission of providing impactful reporting — and sharing it freely — Wisconsin Watch is the news organization best suited to encourage this collaborative effort across our state. Strengthened by our combination with NNS, we’ll listen to learn of the most pressing information needs in Milwaukee and across Wisconsin, then find ways to fill them.

For example:

In 2022 Wisconsin Watch launched a statehouse bureau that provides trustworthy, nonpartisan reporting and fact-checking to more than 200 news outlets across the state. We’re not duplicating what other reporters are doing, but providing statewide audiences with key accountability journalism not available from other sources.

We’re building up our statewide investigative muscle to offer our services as an in-depth reporting team for all newsrooms in the state that no longer have the resources to dig deep. This type of reporting is critical to uncovering wrongdoing and bringing real-world solutions to light, so we the people can demand better. 

We’re finding ways to serve folks who aren’t getting enough accurate, fact-based local news today. A case in point: We’re taking our fact checks and political reporting, as well as highlights from our investigations, and converting them into radio reports and social video shorts. The audio formats, shared freely with radio stations, will deliver trustworthy local news to areas of the state with low broadband access and usage; the video shorts will be shared on social networks where young audiences increasingly get their news and information. 

These are just a few examples. We can only fill these critical gaps with help from supporters like you. Please consider donating to Wisconsin Watch and NNS today. 

If you’d like to learn more about contributing to our work, please reach out to our director of philanthropy, Anna January, at ajanuary@wisconsinwatch.org.

Thank you!

Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service merge to bolster local news 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.