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Recently we’ve seen Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota and a young Republican influencer targeted for assassination; troops corralling protesters on American streets; a U.S. senator handcuffed and hauled away from a public event; news outlets being threatened and sued; lies, propaganda and doctored videos raging across social networks. 

Across our state and nation, more and more of the information people receive is bitter and dividing. New technologies have changed how people shop, advertise and search for information. Mobile feeds are driven by algorithms that grab attention by fueling passions, especially anger and lust. These same changes have undermined the business model that long financed local news outlets — the sources that inform communities, connect neighbors and nurture civic life. 

This all contributes to the fracturing of our communities, to folks not getting the information they need to navigate everyday challenges and to declining trust that our democracy still works at finding solutions. 

You can see it in annual Gallup polls measuring trust in our institutions. Since the late 1970s, folks who say they trust the news media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” have dropped from 72% to 31%.  Likewise, trust in the medical system has plunged from 74% to 36%, in church and organized religion from 64% to 32%, in public schools from 53% to 29%, in banks from 60% to 27%, in Congress from 40% to 9%. 

More and more of us feel overwhelmed by dramatic headlines from social networks, text feeds, national outlets and national chains posing as local news channels. Yet we’re seeing less and less about what’s happening in our neighborhoods, cities and counties.

We’re seeing plenty about the worst things happening in the world at the moment. 

But in many local communities, we’re not seeing nearly enough fair, honest reporting about what’s happening where we live, where most of our tax dollars are spent and where decisions that shape our everyday lives are made: in school board meetings, in city halls, in statehouses, in gatherings of people of good will trying to make things better. 

At the core of all this lies a market disruption in a society that relies on the marketplace to fill its needs — until it can’t. The local commerce advertising model that long supported local news has been overturned.

And the consequences are alarming. When communities lose their local news, civic engagement drops, corruption goes unchecked, government waste increases, polarization deepens, people begin to lose faith in democracy and its institutions.

Our democratic republic, more than other forms of government, relies on trust and truth.

The founders of our republic overcame an entitled king and the world’s strongest military. They knew that tyrants grasp and retain power by controlling the stories told to the people they rule. They understood how critical a well-informed citizenry would be to the success of self-government. 

They gave us the First Amendment to the Constitution so that citizens without political power would be free to tell one another what was really going on. 

They worried, in those early years,  how people in small towns and rural areas — outside of Boston, Philadelphia and New York — would receive enough news and information to make sound decisions and keep control over their government. So the first Postal Act, signed into law by President George Washington, provided free delivery of newspapers — a government subsidy of local news as a public service. 

This helped sow the seeds of a local news industry that would expand to serve a growing population of people arriving from across the globe in search of liberty.  Local commerce did the rest — from people selling to their neighbors through classified ads, to retailers advertising their wares to everyone within driving distance of their stores. This business model supported news reporters who covered floods and fires, zoning and planning commissions, school boards, village councils, county boards, state agencies, elections and community events — from our smallest towns to our biggest cities — until the 21st century. 

The collapse of that business model happened so quickly that we haven’t had time to adjust or even to understand what it means.  

In 1999, I was managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel when its sales and profits hit heights they would never see again. Classified ads of neighbors selling to neighbors filled multiple print sections. The three largest retail advertisers were Boston Store, American TV and Circuit City.

Craigslist was a startup in the San Francisco Bay area offering free online ads for folks selling cars, boats, jobs and services. They supported their small staff with revenue from display advertising appearing next to the free classifieds.  

Amazon sold one product: printed books, with ink on paper. 

Over the next decade, Craigslist and imitators spread like windswept wildfires to every city and then town, sucking the classified ads out of every local newspaper in  America. 

On the retail side, Circuit City closed in the Great Recession. 

When American TV shut down a few years later, its family owner said their stores had “become showrooms for Amazon.” Folks would come in, see a product they liked, google their cellphones to find it on sale at a lower price elsewhere in the world, and order it right then and there to be delivered to their homes. 

Boston Store, a fixture in Milwaukee since the 1890s, strived to stay alive by buying other department store chains to find economies of scale but succumbed in 2018.  

By that time, the Journal Sentinel, which traced its roots to before Milwaukee was a city and before Wisconsin was a state, had been sold first to a national media chain based in Cincinnati, then spun off to a newspaper chain based in Washington, D.C., which itself was swallowed by a hedge-fund-controlled chain rising from the depths of bankruptcy.

The same thing was happening to local advertisers and local newsrooms almost everywhere. Green Bay, for example, was home to Prange’s and Shopko. Gone.

Every major daily newspaper in Wisconsin is now owned by a distant cost-cutting chain, as are most commercial broadcast outlets and many community weeklies. 

We’ve lost more than six out of 10 journalists in Wisconsin and nationwide, but it’s worse than that. Because most of the journalists left are clustered in our biggest cities. There, many continue to do outstanding work despite shrinking budgets, often with the help of grants, fellowships and partnerships. But as parent corporations seek to maximize digital audiences and subscriptions, they devote a lion’s share of resources toward the same attention-grabbing national stories, highlighting the most tragic events and most polarizing political conflicts, while spewing nonstop coverage of celebrities, sports stars and social network gossip. 

An average of two local newspapers in America have been closing each week for the past 20 years. About half our nation’s counties have only one news outlet left, and hundreds have none. The smaller and less wealthy the community, the bigger the losses. 

“Ghost” newspapers are proliferating, featuring legacy mastheads with stories from elsewhere because no local journalists remain in town. 

At the same time, Wisconsin has become one of just seven swing election states that determine which party and their backers win control over branches of the federal government. As a result we attract huge volumes of attack ads and misleading propaganda from those seeking national power and influence. Political websites disguised as  nonpartisan news outlets have proliferated. Our state and local elections and public discussions increasingly reflect the bitter “us against them” dysfunction we see at the national level. 

Take, for example, the circus of a “nonpartisan” state Supreme Court race we witnessed this past spring. Misleading attack ads dominated TV and radio; campaign text alerts buzzed over our phones; faraway billionaires with personal agendas spent tens of millions to elect one judge in a place they might have flown over; the world’s richest man, born and raised in South Africa and now residing in Texas, donned a Cheesehead while passing out million-dollar checks to Wisconsin voters. 

As The Constitution was being ratified in 1787, Ben Franklin was asked: “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

“A republic,” he famously responded. “IF you can keep it.”

To keep our republic, we must revive our local news ecosystem. 

Given the huge loss of reporters covering local government and community life, we need to begin by nurturing collaborative efforts, where newsrooms work together to tell the local and state stories that matter most. As a Wisconsin-based nonprofit with a mission of providing impactful reporting — and sharing it freely — Wisconsin Watch is the news outlet in the best position to support this revival across our state.  

We’ll need help from all who can provide it.

Here’s a quick sampling of what we hope to do with support from members, donors and everyone who cares about rejuvenating democracy and civic life in Wisconsin: 

• We’re investing in a statehouse bureau that is providing evidence-based reporting and fact-checking to more than 200 news outlets across the state. We’re not duplicating what others are doing but providing key accountability and campaign stories that otherwise wouldn’t be reported. 
  
  
• We’re building our in-depth investigative team to offer our services to all newsrooms in the state that no longer have the resources to dig deep. If a local news outlet or citizen suspects incompetence, wrongdoing, misspending of taxpayer dollars, abuse of power, bring it to Wisconsin Watch. In addition to shining a light on the problem, we are searching for examples of places doing a better job tackling similar challenges. 
  
  
• We’re serving accurate, fact-based state and local news to folks wherever they get their information. That includes sharing video summaries of key news stories on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. It includes video and audio fact checks shared freely with commercial and public radio stations reaching rural areas with low broadband usage.
  
  
• We’re adding local journalists to fill news deserts. In Milwaukee, we’ve merged with Neighborhood News Service. In northeast Wisconsin, we’re collaborating with commercial and nonprofit newsrooms and the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation. We’re listening to learn folks’ most pressing local news needs, then we’ll find ways to fill them — and get that information to the people who need it most, through the channels they’re using.
  
  
• We’re raising money to fill key reporting gaps. This will include training citizen observers to objectively take notes and ask questions at public meetings and hearings where there aren’t enough journalists to cover the ground. It will include reporting beats focused on public service — major challenges people are facing; solutions folks are bringing to the table; key issues such as the challenge of today’s housing market; affordable child and senior care; the skills and education needed for family-supporting jobs and how to get them. 
  
  
• We’re aspiring to replicate our regional news bureaus across the state as the impact of this work proves its value. 

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America from France 200 years ago to explain to his peers in Europe how this new experiment in democracy was working.  He saw firsthand how messy things can get — how hard it can be to build consensus with so many points of view and competing interests in play. 

So when a European gentleman asked him how America had become so enlightened, Tocqueville shook his head. He said: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”

How do we repair those faults? I’ve seen long-standing and seemingly insurmountable challenges overcome when three things are present: 

1. Enough people see and understand the problem to get the attention of responsible parties.
   
   
2. Enough people care about the problem to demand better.
   
   
3. People can see a road map to success — examples where folks  have tackled similar problems more effectively, with evidence to back it up. 

When these three things are present, political partisanship tends to dissipate and people of goodwill come together to build better ways. 

When all three elements are absent, the inertia of doing things the way they’ve always been done remains in charge. 

So no matter what problem you aim to address in our democracy, you’ll need honest reporters to inform the public, to show how the problem is affecting real people and to highlight better ways. Otherwise, you’re likely to grow frustrated you’ve spent so much time, money and energy while things never seem to get better. 

As Alberto Ibargüen, longtime head of the Knight Foundation, puts it: “Whatever your first priority, journalism needs to be your second” priority if you want to make a difference and make improvements in our democratic republic.

It’s time to support public service journalism in the same way we support our libraries, the arts and other civic treasures essential to quality of life. Let’s nurture community and ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people does not perish from the earth. 

Sarabeth Berman, head of the American Journalism Project, one of our supporters, puts it this way: 

“This is not the story of a dying industry. It is the story of a country choosing to rebuild its civic life — one newsroom, one community at a time.”

I love her emphasis on the key elements of choice and action, which many folks don’t think about until it’s pointed out in a powerful way.

We are a democracy. The government, at all levels, works for us when we do our part. We can act to change things. We don’t have to be resigned and accept the way things are as inevitable. We’re in charge — if we choose to be.

America struggled through similar challenges more than a century ago when the industrial revolution dramatically shifted massive wealth into the hands of a few. The two political parties, and the wealthy and powerful forces supporting them, fostered polarization, disinformation and benefited from “us against them” tactics. The highly partisan “yellow press” of the Gilded Age behaved much like the angry partisans in our feeds today. 

But then responsible grown-ups of goodwill took back control — one community, one state at a time. Along with Theodore Roosevelt at the national level, our state was a leader in this movement, with people like Fighting Bob La Follette, Charles Van Hise, Daniel Hoan and Charles McCarthy. The fruits of their efforts include The Wisconsin Idea and one of the nation’s first journalism schools in Madison — to teach and spread nonpartisan, fact-based, honest reporting that informs the good people of Wisconsin.

It is time for us all to do our part again. We welcome your contributions and support.

Rebuilding civic life requires truthful, independent journalism 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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This is Hongyu Liu, Wisconsin Watch’s new data investigative reporter. 

If you’ve ever been confused and even intimidated by statistics and other numbers, I feel you. 

I was in the same boat three years ago while interning at a newspaper in Quincy, Massachusetts. 

When gas prices soared, my colleagues and I made weekly calls to every gas station in town, asking for price updates. It was an effort to help readers who were not familiar with gas price apps to learn where to fill up their cars more affordably. But we were soon drowning in data. Each week, we posted a lengthy list of individual prices, which were already one day old when reaching the readers’ doorsteps. We didn’t quite know how to look at the numbers in a more thoughtful, useful way.

Had I the analysis skills I’ve since developed, I would have approached the assignment differently. I would have looked for trends that may have inspired stories about how the higher gas prices might tighten the budgets of residents. 

My eagerness for understanding the world of numbers prompted me to pursue a master’s degree in data journalism at Columbia University. There, I found my niche is where data analysis, web design and journalistic storytelling intersect. I went on to spend almost two years in Charleston, South Carolina, as a data reporting fellow at The Post and Courier, becoming the newsroom “data nerd.” I used data skills to sift through drug prescription records to find evidence of identity theft and understand how loosened regulations led to a surge in sea turtle deaths from dredging near ports.

Now I’m eager to do similar reporting for Wisconsin, using data to provide rich context to our journalism that aims to make communities strong, informed and connected. That includes finding investigative leads rooted in data and producing visualizations that explain the issues we cover, such as through our DataWatch series.

We live in a world with ever-increasing reams of raw data that, if understood and analyzed, can help us better understand our communities. I’m stepping in at Wisconsin Watch to take the lead on how we use data in our journalism — and to understand how actors across the state are representing or even misrepresenting data trends.

I want to hear from you. If you have ideas for data we should analyze and visualize, or if you have questions about data in a government report, email me at hliu@wisconsinwatch.org and share your thoughts.

Digging into data that explains Wisconsin 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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Sometimes life hits you with full-circle moments. For me, writing this is one of them. 

After eight years away from the Badger State, I returned home this month to start my role as the new state government and politics reporter at Wisconsin Watch. I will be following the major stories inside the Capitol and connecting with key players in and outside of the building to make sure Wisconsinites understand what is happening in their government and how it affects their lives. 

This work is important to me because Wisconsin is my home. I grew up in the Milwaukee area and graduated from Marquette University, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Real-world reporting opportunities in college at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service launched my career and taught me the value of community journalism. (NNS is now part of Wisconsin Watch, another full-circle moment.) 

I spent my post-college years reporting on local government at the Naples Daily News in southwest Florida and most recently in Indiana at the Indianapolis Star. Over four-and-a-half years in Indianapolis, I covered local, state and federal politics in the Hoosier State, which included stories on Democratic infighting over reproductive care, the dilemma over how far Republicans should go on property tax reform and how the state’s child labor violations rose as lawmakers rolled back existing protections. 

One thing never changed during my time away: Wisconsin was always on my mind, and frequently in the national spotlight. (It hasn’t even been six months since the April Supreme Court race set another spending record.) I felt a pull to return home, and Wisconsin Watch gave me that rare opportunity. 

I’m thrilled to be back and to contribute to the important journalism my colleagues are doing every day across the state.

In the meantime, you can help me get going in this essential work. Email me at bcarloni@wisconsinwatch.org with your ideas on what to look into, questions about why our government works the way it does and suggestions for who I should meet. You can also subscribe to our weekly politics newsletter, Forward, to stay informed about what’s coming each week at the Capitol.

When it comes to covering state government and politics, there’s no place like Wisconsin 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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As of July, two dozen Ashland residents had cases pending in federal immigration court. Attending court dates in person would require at least a three-and-a-half-hour trek to Fort Snelling in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Two mosques in Barron owe their existence to a nearby Jennie-O turkey plant, which has employed Somali refugees on its processing line since the 1990s.

And for the first time in five decades, Milwaukee’s Oklahoma Avenue did not host a Mexican independence day parade this September. Instead, a smaller crowd marked the holiday on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Mitchell Park, and a small convoy of pickup trucks flying Mexican flags spent the weekend cruising Milwaukee’s South Side, eliciting friendly honks from supportive fellow drivers.  

Immigration is as front-of-mind in Wisconsin as it is across the country. If it’s at the front of your mind, Wisconsin Watch wants to hear from you.

Are you an immigrant yourself? A business owner sponsoring an employee’s green card? A teacher meeting with parents from a half-dozen countries? A public official in a town like Barron? Does your farm rely on seasonal guest workers? Whoever you are, we want your help building a clearer picture of how immigration is reshaping Wisconsin – and how Wisconsin is shaping its immigrant communities.

Wisconsin Watch has covered immigration for more than a decade, but this year, we’re devoting new energy to the subject. That’s where I come in.

I’m Paul Kiefer, Wisconsin Watch’s first dedicated immigration reporter, albeit as a one-year Roy W. Howard fellow. I’m new to Wisconsin, but I’ve covered immigration before, most recently for the Washington Post on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where a fast-growing Haitian community is reassessing its relationship with the region’s poultry industry.

Immigration is rarely a stand-alone subject, and we plan to explore the intersections with Wisconsin Watch’s other coverage areas. What role will immigrants play in the future of Wisconsin’s paper mills? What becomes of homes left empty when their residents are deported? What trade-offs are involved when a county jail dedicates cell space to hold ICE detainees?

Above all else, we want our immigration coverage to reach as broad a cross section of Wisconsin as possible. That means considering the input of Wisconsinites from every walk of life, always with our mission – to inform, to connect and to hold officials accountable – in mind.

If you have suggestions, tips or questions, please reach out to me at pkiefer@wisconsinwatch.org. I speak English and Spanish; if you speak another language, we can work out a way to communicate.

Help shape our immigration reporting 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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Thank you so much for being part of the Wisconsin Watch community and for using our mobile app! We launched it as a way to explore new ways of staying connected with readers. In a rapidly changing media landscape, experimentation is key to figuring out where to best invest our time and resources to reach new audiences. 

After careful review we’ve decided to discontinue the current version of the app on Sept. 25, 2025. We know that some people may feel disappointed by this decision because they love the convenience of a button on their home screen. 

In that case, we have good news for you. You can get a very similar experience by adding a bookmark for our mobile-friendly website to the home screen of your phone. Here’s how to do that: 

• Instructions to bookmark a mobile-friendly site for iPhone/iOS
• Instructions to bookmark a mobile-friendly site for Android

You will continue to see updates in the app through Sept. 25, 2025, and after that date it will no longer refresh with new stories. We are so grateful for your continued support and thank you for reading and for being part of our work!

If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with our director of audience, Cecilia Dobbs, at cdobbs@wisconsinwatch.org.

A note for our app users 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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If you avidly read Wisconsin Watch, you’ve learned plenty about prisons in Wisconsin. As our reporting has shown, they’re overcrowded, understaffed and particularly expensive to operate. In 2020, the state spent $220 per resident to lock up people — significantly higher than neighboring states. 

Wisconsin Watch has covered prison issues for more than a decade, but we’ve prioritized that coverage since reporter Mario Koran teamed up with The New York Times to expose a staffing crisis that resulted in extended lockdowns, substandard health care for prisoners and untenable working conditions for correctional officers. Our press corps colleagues joined us with months of sustained coverage, forcing lawmakers and the Department of Corrections to respond in some ways. 

We’re proud of that reporting. But as we continue exposing such problems, we’re doubling down on exploring solutions. For instance, Addie Costello and Joe Timmerman last month profiled Camp Reunite, a unique program that helps Wisconsin prisoners maintain relationships with their children — recognizing that family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism. 

But how might Wisconsin solve its biggest prison problems? We’re discussing that as a staff. The question is tricky because so many challenges outside of prison walls shape the problems within them, whether its barriers to housing, jobs or health care. That’s why we’re discussing coverage with beat reporters across the Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service newsrooms. 

In the coming months, expect more coverage that highlights more humane and cost-effective ways to protect public safety and rehabilitate people who do break the law. What can Wisconsin learn from other states that have reduced prison populations without jeopardizing safety? We’re asking. 

As with all of our stories, we’ll prioritize those with the potential for impact. Our journalism aims to help people navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.

Meantime, we want to hear from you. What topics or storylines do you hope to see us follow? What perspectives would you like to share? Feel free to email me at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.

How we’re reporting on Wisconsin prisons 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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In welcoming you behind the scenes of our reporting, we’ve shared plenty about how our newsroom operates — from how we’re covering Washington’s disruption to how your tips shape our coverage of everything from rural homelessness to the return of measles.

Today I want to discuss something more fundamental: Out of the infinite stories we could report at a given time, how do we decide which to pursue with our finite resources?

This requires us to evaluate whether a potential story would fit within our mission and deliver impact for residents. How we do that is something we’re constantly refining. 

Our mission is to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected through our journalism. Our intended impact: that people use our reporting to navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.

Before green-lighting a story, we consider its potential impact. If we can’t identify any, it’s likely not worth pursuing — at least not yet. We ask where the idea originated (bonus points for ideas directly from the public) or whether other newsrooms have covered this topic. Recognizing that we want to fill gaps rather than re-report the news, we consider whether the story will add knowledge and understanding to previous reporting — and whether our story would elevate different perspectives. 

Another question: Why is it important to tell this story now, as opposed to other stories?

We’ve formalized this process, which begins with a pitch form that reporters fill out and discuss with their editor. The process has sparked productive conversations about how we can best serve the public. In some cases, we’ve decided an idea doesn’t fit. In other cases, the process has persuaded a skeptical editor that a story is worthwhile.

If you have questions about why we have — or have not — reported a particular story, feel free to reach out. I’m at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.

What makes a Wisconsin Watch story? Mission and impact matter 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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Change is hard, and exciting. 

That’s what I tell myself as my family and I prepare to move across the state. 

We currently live in Superior, but we’ll soon lay roots in Door County, where I grew up. I’m a little over a week into my role as Wisconsin Watch’s regional editor for northeast Wisconsin. 

The journey so far

I grew up in Egg Harbor and graduated from Sevastopol High School before attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, I earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English. 

I’ve spent the majority of my career in Wisconsin: first as an education reporter in Watertown, then reporting and editing in the Fox Cities and Superior. 

My most recent role was managing editor for Project Optimist, a nonprofit news outlet that reports on greater Minnesota (everything outside of the Twin Cities metro area). 

When I saw Wisconsin Watch post this job, I knew I had to apply. Several friends and former colleagues worked as Wisconsin Watch interns. They spoke highly of their experiences, and they’re some of the most talented, hardworking journalists I know. 

Furthermore, I published Wisconsin Watch stories as an editor for the Superior Telegram. I know firsthand how vital the organization’s coverage is to news outlets throughout the state. 

What we’re up to

The NEW News Lab launched in 2022. Wisconsin Watch joined the collaboration along with five media organizations, Microsoft, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, the Greater Green Bay Area Community Foundation, and the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region. 

The effort puts in-depth local journalism front and center, and it gained traction. We’ve collaborated to explore solutions to a range of challenges that affect northeast Wisconsin families — from unaffordable housing and child care to dangerous conditions at nursing homes and the region’s labor crunch.  However, Wisconsin Watch hasn’t had staff in northeast Wisconsin until now. 

The northeast Wisconsin newsroom is our way of crystallizing our commitment to the region. We want to build on the partnerships forged through the NEW News Lab and strengthen them. I believe journalists serve communities best when we set competition aside and put readers first. 

Fellow Door County native Jessica Adams is our director of partnerships for the northeast region and has been helping us learn about what people want and need from local news. Over the past several months, she held listening sessions at public libraries and met with stakeholders. If you want to let Jessica know your thoughts, you can take her online survey here. 

Miranda Dunlap is our first reporter in Green Bay. She’s focused on pathways to success – a beat I’m thrilled to lead. Learn more about it from Miranda here. 

I’m excited to meet new faces, connect and see where Wisconsin Watch fits into the local media landscape.

Have a story idea? Email it to jzvandenhouten@wisconsinwatch.org.

Meet Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten, our new northeast Wisconsin regional editor 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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Back in February I shared our newsroom’s plan for covering President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. As noted then, whether you love or loathed the disruption in Washington, it promised to deeply affect our lives in Wisconsin. 

And it has.

Five months later, Washington’s whirlwind is still churning — whether it’s the dismantling of the Department of Education, canceled or frozen grants, tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich or newly enacted work requirements that are expected to kick people off of Medicaid.

Here is an update on how we’ve leaned into our strengths in keeping communities connected and informed during exhausting news cycles. We promised: 

Reporting that prioritizes your questions and tips

That includes Addie Costello’s tip-inspired feature about Madison’s Yahara House, which focuses on building relationships and job opportunities for adults with serious mental illness — a model shown to work. Costello explored how Wisconsin could expand support for such programs and how federal cuts to Medicaid could jeopardize access.

We’ve also focused on news you can use, such as this story from Devin Blake of Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, which explained people’s rights as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conduct sweeping arrests.

Prioritizing context over speed

When Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested in March for allegedly helping a man without legal status evade federal immigration authorities, we amplified daily updates from our trusted partners at the Associated Press while considering what our specific expertise could add to the conversation. The result: this context-rich story from Jack Kelly about how Dugan’s arrest echoed the arrest of a Massachusetts judge in 2019. 

This approach has shaped how we’ve covered tariffs, frozen funding and disrupted programs. We’ve examined local impacts to adult education students, AmeriCorps volunteers, local farmers, people who are homeless and a program that teaches about Milwaukee’s history — just to name a few.  

It has also informed our coverage of Trump’s self-described big bill-turned law, including what provisions mean for Medicaid recipients and people seeking workforce training. Our fact briefs in partnership with Gigafact have helped readers understand which claims about the bill were true. 

Collaboration

As always, we’ve continued to distribute our reporting for free, team up with other newsrooms on big stories and amplify the great work of our partners. 

In June, Wisconsin Watch’s Natalie Yahr collaborated with Erin McGroarty of the Cap Times to bring you the story of Miguel Jerez Robles, a McFarland man who was among the first people swept up in a wave of arrests inside immigration court buildings. The story illustrated the volatility and randomness of the country’s immigration processes — and the aggressiveness of Trump’s approach. We detailed Jerez’s detention and, shortly after publication, his surprise release.

We additionally republished a pair of stories from The 19th about Yessenia Ruano, a Milwaukee teacher’s aide and mother of twin U.S.-citizen daughters who hoped to avoid a forced return to El Salvador — 14 years after arriving in Wisconsin. The most recent story illustrated Ruano’s farewell to Milwaukee as she and her children left rather than risking detention.

Meanwhile, we’re still rounding up top headlines in our Wisconsin Weekly newsletter, the most recent of which included a WPR story about Trump’s proposal to ax the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which investigated a 2018 refinery explosion in Superior that injured dozens of workers and forced residents to evacuate. 

We want our coverage to offer you actionable information — and help you digest the most important storylines without feeling overwhelmed.

Let us know how we’re doing. Please keep shaping our reporting by sending your tips, questions and feedback. If you don’t hear from us immediately, please do know that we read everything you send.

How Wisconsin Watch is covering disruption from Washington 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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About this video

The Local Food Purchase Assistance program, or LFPA, was a federal program that awarded states two-year grants to help small farmers invest in their local food systems while growing their businesses. 

The Trump administration gutted the program in March, just as farmers started placing seed orders. The timing particularly affected livestock farmers who often need to commit to the size of their herd and harvest over a year in advance. 

Wisconsin Watch staff writer Bennet Goldstein spent weeks talking with producers affected by the loss of LFPA, including Jess D’Souza, a pork farmer in Dane County. During one of several visits to her farm, he and photojournalist Patricio Crooker watched meat processors harvest her pigs to fully appreciate how food travels from farm to plate.

On a separate visit to the farm, Joe Timmerman photographed Jess and her herd of Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs, documenting many beautiful moments on the piece of agricultural land that she purchased nearly a decade ago and eventually named Wonderfarm. 

Collectively, the images tell a story of life, death and resilience on a small farm – but  some viewers may find some of the images in the video uncomfortable or even emotionally upsetting. Our decision to include them was the result of many discussions that touch on long-standing debates in newsrooms about when it is justified to publish or showcase disquieting images related to death, injury or violence. 

Some of the questions raised in these discussions don’t have simple answers. For instance, Bennet wonders whether our desire to outsource meat production to others —  and hide the bloody parts of that business — contributes to the characterization of these photos as being in poor taste or emotionally disturbing.

We welcome your thoughts and feedback on any of the issues and questions raised in this reporting.

As for the LFPA program’s future, Wisconsin producers hope to see funding restored in the yet-to-be-debated federal Farm Bill. 

Video: life, death and resilience at Wonderfarm 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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If you live in northeast Wisconsin, I want to hear about your experience forging your path to meaningful, family-sustaining work.

But first, let me introduce myself. I’m Miranda Dunlap, and I’m Wisconsin Watch’s new reporter covering pathways to success in the region. That means I’ll write stories about how local people prepare themselves for their dream jobs and what roadblocks stand in the way. 

I’m a native Michigander, and I previously spent two years reporting on community colleges and K-12 education for Houston Landing in Texas. I’ve spent countless hours learning about the experiences of people pursuing affordable education and training to change the trajectory of their life. That was after community college opened doors in my own career. Completing a year’s worth of credits at my local institution helped me afford enrolling at a university and shaved thousands of dollars off my total student debt. 

I’m Wisconsin Watch’s second pathways to success reporter but the first journalist hired specifically to serve northeast Wisconsin. My colleague Natalie Yahr covers pathways from a statewide perspective, and I’m focused on reporting for Brown, Calumet, Door, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Marinette, Oconto, Outagamie, Shawano and Winnebago counties. Based in Green Bay, I hope people will see me as more than a trusted source of information, but also their neighbor — someone who will ensure Wisconsin Watch’s work reflects the perspectives of local residents.

My goal is to produce journalism that confronts your challenges, highlights resources and opportunities for economic mobility and answers your burning questions.

You can expect my stories to explore barriers that prevent them from finding sustainable employment, and I’ll examine whether leaders and higher education institutions are investing in solutions and tools to overcome these obstacles. I’ll do it all with an eye toward the unique identities of northeast Wisconsin communities. 

As I dig into this beat, I’m particularly interested in hearing from people with nontraditional routes to the workforce — or those who face added barriers to success. That might include incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people, those from low-income families, folks living in rural, under-resourced communities or workers returning to education to switch careers. 

I hope you’ll point me in the right direction by answering some of my questions. 

What do you think I need to know about northeast Wisconsin to understand the challenges that people and communities here face when it comes to economic stability and mobility?

What are your career dreams — to fulfill your own professional goals and support your family? What, if anything, is standing in the way? 

Have you attended a community or technical college in the region, such as Northeast Wisconsin Technical College or Fox Valley Technical College? If so, what was your experience?

Are you a local employer struggling to find skilled workers to fill your jobs? What would help?

Do you know of an organization or institution successfully guiding people toward the skills and information they need to succeed? 

Your insights and experiences will shape my reporting. You can share them with me by filling out this form.

Miranda covers pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin in partnership with Open Campus. Reach her via email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

Help us report on local workforce challenges and opportunities in northeast Wisconsin 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.