Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom that uses journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected, seeks a senior reporter to lead our newsroom’s state government coverage.
The successful candidate will be responsible for producing regular coverage of state government policy and politics with a premium on explaining how they affect the public and how citizens can stay in charge of their government. Coverage will include regular stories that provide context and deepen understanding about state government activities, explain what elected representatives are up to for areas of the state with no Capitol coverage, and deliver high-impact investigative and explanatory solutions. A top-tier candidate will already have a following on social media and be comfortable discussing Wisconsin politics on radio, TV and podcasts and in other web-based formats. Our aim is to deliver important state government news and knowledge to people through their preferred format and channels, whether that’s shared social videos, concise newsletter summaries or compelling narratives.
The statehouse reporter will:
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 reporter who:
Key bonus skills:
Location: The reporter will be based in Madison with desks in both the Capitol press room and our Wisconsin Watch newsroom in Madison.
Salary and benefits: The annual salary range is $60,000-$80,000. Benefits include five weeks of vacation; paid sick leave and family and caregiver leave; 75% reimbursement for silver-tier health and dental insurance on the federal exchange; 100% vision insurance coverage; $100 per paycheck automatic employer contribution to a 403(b) retirement plan (no match required).
Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience.
Deadline: May 30, 2025
To apply: Please submit a PDF of your resume, work samples and answer some brief questions in this application form. If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Hiring Manager Matthew DeFour at mdefour@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.
Founded in 2009, Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing independent, nonpartisan journalism that makes the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. We believe that access to truthful local 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 multiple news departments including a statewide investigative and explanatory projects team, a Capitol bureau, a regional collaboration in northeast Wisconsin called the NEW News Lab, and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS).
NNS was founded in 2011 as a mission-driven newsroom that reports on and celebrates Milwaukee’s central city neighborhoods. Through its reporting, website, e-newsletters and News414 texting service, NNS covers ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connects readers with resources and serves as a watchdog for their neighbors. Together, Wisconsin Watch’s state team and NNS reporters collaborate to produce solutions-oriented investigative and explanatory stories highlighting issues affecting communities in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin Watch seeks experienced statehouse reporter 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.
Democratic voters on Thursday asked the liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court to throw out the battleground state’s current congressional district boundaries after a similar request was rejected last year.
Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight U.S. House seats — but only two of those districts are considered competitive. The petition seeks to have the state’s congressional district lines redrawn ahead of the 2026 midterms. Filed on Wednesday and made public Thursday, the petition comes from the Elias Law Group, which represents Democratic groups and candidates and also filed last year’s request.
The new petition argues that the court’s decision to redraw maps for state legislative districts a couple years ago has opened the door to revisiting maps for U.S. House districts. The petition asks for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take the case directly, skipping lower courts.
The chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, Brian Schimming, called the lawsuit “a desperate attempt by far-left Democrats who have shown time and time again that they can’t win without rigged maps.”
But Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, who criticized the state Supreme Court for not hearing the lawsuit last year, praised the new effort.
“The residents of Wisconsin deserve fair maps,” Pocan said in a text message. “Hopefully this will provide that.”
The court is controlled 4-3 by liberal justices. Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford won an April election to ensure the court will remain under a 4-3 liberal majority until at least 2028.
Redistricting was an issue in that race after Crawford spoke at a virtual event billed as a “chance to put two more House seats in play,” a move that Republicans said shows that Crawford is committed to redrawing congressional districts to benefit Democrats. Crawford denied those allegations.
Liberals will control the court until at least 2028 — with implications for abortion rights, congressional redistricting, labor rights and the environment.
The court in 2023 ordered new maps for the state Legislature, saying the Republican-drawn ones were unconstitutional. The GOP-controlled Legislature, out of fear that the court would order maps even more unfavorable to Republicans, passed ones drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Democrats made gains in the state Legislature in the November election and are hoping to take majority control in 2026.
When ordering the state legislative maps redrawn, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said the earlier conservative-controlled court was wrong in 2021 to say that maps drawn that year should have as little change as possible from the maps that were in place at the time. The latest lawsuit argues that decision warranted replacing the congressional district maps that were drawn under the “least change” requirement.
In 2010, the year before Republicans redrew the congressional maps, Democrats held five seats compared with three for Republicans.
Democrats are eyeing two congressional seats for possible flipping in 2026.
Western Wisconsin’s 3rd District is represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who won an open seat in 2022 after longtime Democratic Rep. Ron Kind retired, and won reelection in 2024.
Southeastern Wisconsin’s 1st District, held by Republican Rep. Bryan Steil since 2019, was made more competitive under the latest maps but still favors Republicans.
The current congressional maps in Wisconsin, drawn by Evers, were approved by the state Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2022 declined to block them from taking effect.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Democrats ask Wisconsin Supreme Court to toss state’s congressional boundaries 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.
The father of a Wisconsin teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting was charged with felonies Thursday in connection with the case, police said.
The shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison last December.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, of Madison, was taken into custody around 3:45 a.m. Thursday, police said.
Rupnow was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 resulting in death. All three charges are felonies, punishable by up to six years in prison each. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on Friday.
Rupnow’s daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, opened fire on Dec. 16, 2024, at Abundant Life Christian School, killing a teacher and a 14-year-old student before killing herself. Two other students were critically injured.
Jeffrey Rupnow did not immediately respond to a message The Associated Press left on his Facebook page. No one immediately returned voicemails left at possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow. Online court records indicate he represented himself in the couple’s 2022 divorce and do not list an attorney for him in that case.
According to a criminal complaint, Rupnow told investigators that his daughter was traumatized by her parents’ divorce and got into shooting guns after he took her shooting on a friend’s land. He said he bought her two handguns and told her the access code to his gun safe was his Social Security number entered backward.
Investigators discovered writings in her room in which she describes humanity as “filth,” hated people, got her weapons through her father’s “stupidity” and wanted to kill herself in front of everyone. She built a cardboard model of the school and developed a schedule for her attack that ended just after noon with the notation: “ready 4 death.”
Police recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that her father had bought her from a study hall where she opened fire and another .22-caliber pistol that her father had given to her as a Christmas present in a bag she had been carrying through the school.
Twelve days after the shooting, a Madison police detective received a message from Jeffrey Rupnow saying his biggest mistake was teaching his kid safe gun handling and urging police to warn people to change the codes on their gun safes every two to three months.
“Kids are smart and they will figure it out. Just like someone trying to hack your bank account.’ I just want to protect other families from going through what I’m going through,” he said.
Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.
Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.
The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.
In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.
Killed in the shooting were Abundant Life teacher Erin Michelle West, 42, and student Rubi Patricia Vergara, 14.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school that offers prekindergarten classes through high school. About 420 students attend the institution.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Police arrest father of shooter at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison 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.
Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
The federal Medicare program spends more per beneficiary for a person on Medicare Advantage than if the person were on traditional Medicare.
The difference is projected at 20% higher, or $84 billion, in 2025, compared with 22% and $83 billion in 2024, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.
The independent congressional agency says a key reason is Medicare Advantage uses a fixed monthly payment per beneficiary, rather than fee-for-service.
Medicare is federal health insurance mainly for people age 65 and over. Medicare Advantage is a private alternative paid for by Medicare. Advantage enrollees can get more benefits, but are restricted on providers they can see.
Advantage enrollment has been increasing, but some enrollees find it difficult to switch to traditional Medicare when they get older and sicker.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who represents the Madison area, claimed in April that Medicare Advantage was created to save money but costs more than Medicare.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Does Medicare Advantage cost more than traditional Medicare? 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.
Wisconsin prisoners have struggled to connect with loved ones for weeks and even months as a state contractor fails to keep up with increasing demand for its call and messaging services.
The Department of Corrections last year began working with Texas-based ICSolutions, the prison system’s phone provider, to make electronic tablets free for every state prisoner. The state allocated $2.5 million to cover some of the cost. The program aims to boost quality of life behind bars by making it easier for incarcerated people to connect with their loved ones and access resources.
Intermittent problems began after some prisons began distributing the tablets in March 2024. The issues worsened this spring, prisoners and their family members say, spreading across institutions that imprison more than 23,000.
WPR and Wisconsin Watch heard from more than 25 people experiencing connection difficulties at multiple prisons. Incarcerated people described dialing a number multiple times before getting through and waiting more than an hour for calls to connect. Family members described hearing their phones ring but receiving no option to connect with the caller; some calls have dropped mid-conversation.
Family members are airing frustrations in a nearly 300-member Facebook forum launched specifically to discuss the phone problems.
Brenda McIntyre, incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, traditionally calls her grandchildren every weekend. But the overwhelmed system blocked a recent check-in.
“‘Grandma, why didn’t you call me? You said you’re going to call me,’” McIntyre recalled one grandchild asking when they finally connected.
Phone services somewhat improved late last week, McIntyre said. But she worries about missing updates about her sister’s cancer treatment.
“It’s been a living hell,” she said.
Neither ICSolutions nor its parent company responded to requests for comment. But in an undated statement on its website, the company promised improvements in the “coming weeks,” with “significant optimization coming this summer.” The statement recommended shifting calls to “off-peak hours” — before 5 p.m. or after 9 p.m. But family members say they are not always available at such hours.
Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke squarely blamed ICSolutions, saying state-run infrastructure and Wi-Fi access played no role in the issue.
“To be very clear, the quality of service that ICSolutions is providing is not acceptable to the department. If reliability and customer service do not improve, the department will be forced to reevaluate our contract,” Hardtke wrote in an email.
The statement from ICSolutions blamed “unexpected challenges” from increased demand for calls. But Hardtke said the company previously assured the department it could handle higher call volume during the rollout.
Prisoners in nine of Wisconsin’s 36 adult institutions — including all three women’s facilities — still lack tablets. The glitches affect them, too, because ICSolutions services the entire phone system, not just tablets.
The corrections department is pausing tablet distribution while trying to fix the reliability problems, Hardtke said.
Emily Curtis said she was cautiously excited when her incarcerated fiance gained access to a tablet at Stanley Correctional Institution.
He previously could call only from the prison’s landlines and during limited hours. The tablet enabled calls most anytime, even during lockdowns. For about two months, the two talked daily — right before Curtis fell asleep and right after she woke up.
“It was great,” Curtis said. “Until everything kind of hit the fan.”
Wisconsin is not the only state prison system that has issued tablets.
Unlike some states, however, Wisconsin allows people to make calls from their cells and doesn’t limit the number of calls they can make, Hartdke said via email. That policy, which the department communicated to ICSolutions during contract negotiations, naturally increased call volume, she added.
Calls from Green Bay Correctional Institution, for instance, increased by nearly 200% after the tablet rollout, Hardtke wrote.
Curtis now hears from her fiance just once daily, usually very early in the morning. Their 14-year-old son has gone weeks without talking to his dad, Curtis said, because the phone lines are too jammed once he’s home from school.
ICSolutions and the prison system make millions each year from phone calls. The company charges six cents a minute and shares revenue with the state, adding nearly $4 million to its general fund in recent years.
Curtis said she spends roughly $250 a month on calls.
Tablets present new revenue opportunities for prison contractors. An ICSolutions affiliate sold them to incarcerated Wisconsinites before the state made them free. And even with free tablets, prisoners pay for calls, messaging and other applications.
The high cost of phone calls has long burdened the incarcerated and their families. The Federal Communications Commission last year responded by capping fees. Apps for TV and music aren’t subject to the same regulations. That makes tablets a safer investment for prison telecommunication companies, said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, which focuses on solutions to mass incarceration.
Incarcerated people often greet the rollout of tablets with excitement, Bertram said. But the attempt to improve virtual communication comes as Wisconsin, like other states, has restricted other communication — like physical mail.
In December 2021, the corrections department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The controversial effort aims to reduce the flow of drugs into prisons.
The change delays access to mail and boosts reliance on tablets. As a result, technology glitches have bigger consequences, Betram said.
Charles Gill is incarcerated at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. His fiance lives in New York, and his adult son lives in New Jersey, too far to visit in person. Gill relies largely on his tablet for communication. But online texts have been delayed by two to three days, Gill said.
“We’re helpless,” Gill said.“To be a father, not knowing what’s going on with your child, to be in a relationship with someone and not knowing what’s going on with them. God forbid something happens and somebody goes to the hospital, somebody gets hurt. We don’t know about it, and we can’t reach out to nobody and talk about it.”
Gill felt particularly helpless on Easter weekend, the anniversary of his brother’s death. He couldn’t reach any family members.
“The phones were just destroyed on (Easter) weekend, ” he said. “You could really feel the tension in the air because people weren’t able to call their families.”
He worries about a repeat around Mother’s Day.
“Having that ability to speak to someone who still sees you as a human being and not a number is vital,” said Marianne Oleson, the operations director for Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing of Wisconsin.
That’s especially the case for mothers who are incarcerated. The majority of women in prisons nationally have children under the age of 18, according to a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report. Phone calls offer incarcerated women their only chance to act as parent, wife or daughter — ensuring their loved ones are safe, Oleson said.
The faulty phone system leaves incarcerated people with tough choices.
“We even have to choose to try the phone over going to meals,” Christa Williams, who is incarcerated at Ellsworth prison, wrote in an email.
Shawnda Schultz said phone failures have left her incarcerated mother in tears during recent calls.
“It bothers me because their phone calls are the one thing that (prisoners) have to keep them going in there, and it keeps us going too, because that’s our mother,” Schultz said.
Schultz’s sister recently delivered her first baby. If the phones don’t improve, she worries her mother will miss hearing updates, like when her grandchild says his first word.
“I found myself actually in tears because I’m just like, ‘what if something happens to my mom?’” Schultz said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
‘It’s been a living hell’: Wisconsin prison phone failures leave families disconnected 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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Oshkosh city leaders are calling on the state to increase funding to a program that reimburses communities for costs associated with hosting state properties, saying more than a decade of stagnating state support has shifted costs to local property tax payers.
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The small Midwest office, founded almost 20 years ago by computer scientists from UW-Madison, helps power technology used across the globe.
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Crime scene cleaner Wicky heads to the country to clean up a nasty mess in a holiday home and bumps into his first “proper” girlfriend.
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The Most Rev. Jeffrey Haines, the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, said it's exciting to know that Pope Leo XIV grew up just miles from Milwaukee. "We don't know, he might like custard," Haines joked.
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Republicans took their first step toward rewriting Wisconsin’s state budget Thursday, eliminating more than 600 ideas proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers with a single vote.
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O.W.’s Exalters are celebrating 35 years of harmonizing in Baptist churches across Wisconsin.
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In 2023, America imported about $31 billion in apparel from China and Vietnam, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.
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Two lawsuits filed Thursday are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to declare the state's congressional map unconstitutional ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
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