Are you a young person, or a parent of a young person, trying to figure out what to do after high school?
Are you an adult who’d like to change careers but you’re not sure how, or you think the obstacles are too big to overcome? Or do you love the work you do but wish it paid enough to support your family?
Are you an employer with big plans for your company, if you could just find workers with the right skills and training?
We want to hear from you as Wisconsin Watch launches a new beat. We’re calling it pathways to success, and it explores how schools and institutions are preparing people to find quality, family-sustaining jobs in Wisconsin’s current and future economy and how they could do better. In short, we’ll focus on the jobs people want and need, and what’s getting in their way.
I’m Natalie Yahr, Wisconsin Watch’s first pathways to success reporter, and I’ve thought about this issue for more than a decade. Before this job, I spent about six years at the Cap Times, where I reported on the important jobs Wisconsin will most struggle to fill in the future, efforts of workers to organize and the obstacles they sometimes encounter when they do. For several years before that, I was a teacher and success coach for adult students seeking to get their high school equivalency diplomas, start new careers or just learn basic skills they’d missed.
With this new beat, we aim to answer questions like why it’s often tricky for foreign-trained professionals to restart their careers in Wisconsin, what it would take to make some of the state’s fast-growing-but-low-paying jobs more sustainable and how are state and local governments investing in programs that prepare workers for changes in the economy. These are some initial questions we have, but to make this beat work, we need to hear yours.
Your suggestions and experiences will shape what we cover and how. Call or email me at 608-616-0752 or nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org, in English or Spanish.
I won’t be the only one covering this important beat for Wisconsin Watch. We’re looking to hire an additional pathways reporter to specifically serve people in northeast Wisconsin, while I’ll explore issues that resonate statewide. I expect we’ll collaborate plenty.
We’ll know we’re doing this reporting well if it helps people discover new opportunities or make informed choices about their careers. As we start publishing these stories, please let us know what you think.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On Wednesday, March 26, at 4 p.m. Central time, Wisconsin Watch will host a free, live Zoom discussion about the upcoming state Supreme Court election.
The event will feature a conversation between Wisconsin Watch statehouse reporter Jack Kelly and state bureau chief Matthew DeFour.
The link to RSVP is here, and full background details are below.
On April 1, voters will decide what direction the Wisconsin Supreme Court will shift, and there are only two possible outcomes: a guaranteed liberal majority until 2028 or a 3-3 split with Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative-leaning swing vote, again wielding outsized influence.
The two candidates are Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge endorsed by the court’s four current liberal members, and former Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican who now serves as a Waukesha County judge.
The actions of the state Supreme Court are a major focus for our team — in the final days before Wisconsin voters decide on the future shape of the court, we wanted to create a space for questions and thoughtful discussion.
Following the success of previous events, we’ll have that discussion as a live Zoom event hosted by state bureau chief Matthew DeFour and statehouse reporter Jack Kelly, who first wrote about the race back in January and again this month and has kept subscribers to our Monday morning newsletter, Forward, up to speed with the latest developments in the contest.
We want this discussion to be shaped by your questions, concerns and thoughts about the role of the state Supreme Court and the issues that may be determined by its members in the coming months.
You can submit yours when you RSVP using the form here or by emailing events@wisconsinwatch.org. If you are interested in the event but aren’t sure if you’ll be able to attend, register anyway — it’s free, and we will send everyone who registers a link to the full video after the event is over.
Finally, while the event is free to attend, it isn’t free to produce. If you can afford to make a donation to offset our costs, you’ll join a growing group of ordinary people funding local news.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom that uses journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected, seeks a pathways to success reporter to expand our coverage of issues surrounding postsecondary education and workforce training in northeast Wisconsin. The right candidate will be a curious, collaborative, deep listener who can understand bureaucracies and economic trends that affect people’s lives.
Description
Wisconsin Watch provides trustworthy reporting that investigates problems, explores solutions and serves the public. We aim to strengthen the quality of community life and self-government in Wisconsin by providing people with the knowledge they need to navigate their lives, drive forward solutions and hold those with power accountable. We pursue the truth through accurate, fair, independent, rigorous, nonpartisan reporting. We share our stories freely and collaborate with other news organizations that share our independent, nonpartisan, truth-seeking values.
Why pathways to success?
Funding cuts and other financial pressures have forced higher education institutions to rely more heavily on tuition — increasing affordability challenges for students and affecting the quality of education. Meanwhile, Wisconsin faces a shortage of skilled workers, including in manufacturing, construction, health care, agriculture and information technology. This shortage is exacerbated by an aging workforce, particularly in rural areas, and a gap between the skills employers need and those job seekers have.
Reporting on this beat will help policymakers and civic leaders understand how to expand pathways to jobs. It will also help Wisconsin residents learn the skills needed to build thriving careers. We’re taking a different approach to higher education coverage than news outlets have historically taken. Rather than prioritizing breaking news or scandals at major universities, we’re centering the experiences of learners, families and employers to better understand how the state’s broader postsecondary landscape meets their needs. That includes paying close attention to technical colleges and trades programs.
Why northeast Wisconsin?
In our broader efforts to strengthen the local news ecosystem, Wisconsin Watch is launching a bureau that will serve key information and accountability needs of northeast Wisconsin residents. The bureau will build upon the success of the NEW News Lab, a collaborative launched in 2021 that provides technology support, capacity building and funding to boost local journalism and newsrooms in the region. The collaboration’s five other partners include: WPR, FoxValley365, The Post-Crescent, Green Bay Press-Gazette and The Press Times. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner.
Job duties
The reporter will:
Work with the northeast Wisconsin editor and other colleagues to frame, report and write news stories that serve northeast Wisconsin. These stories will appear on Wisconsin Watch platforms and be distributed to news outlets across Wisconsin and the country.
Listen to those struggling to find family-supporting jobs and to those unable to fill positions to find disconnects among workforce recruitment, development and training and those who are underemployed. Find evidence-based best practices to address this challenge.
Follow up on tips from community members and leaders and develop locally focused stories based on information needs identified in community listening sessions.
Develop sources in secondary and postsecondary education, industries struggling to fill jobs, workforce development, labor and the general public to identify breakdowns in systems, information gaps and success stories that could inform pathways to success.
Research the jobs that will be in high demand for years to come to inform reporting on effective programs for gaining the necessary skills to perform these jobs, from jobs in nursing and health care, where demographics show increasing demand, to developing technologies, such as those in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Work with the northeast Wisconsin editor, community ambassadors and audience team to identify key target audiences for this beat and develop strategies for “meeting those audiences where they are” in terms of information levels, preferred formats and distribution channels.
Cultivate collegial and productive relationships with collaborating news organizations to gather and analyze data, research best practices and maximize impact on stories with national scope. This includes Open Campus, a national news network aiming to improve higher education coverage, and NEW News Lab partners.
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:
Has researched, reported and written original published news stories and/or features on deadline.
Has demonstrated the ability to formulate compelling story pitches to editors.
Aches to report stories that explore solutions to challenges residents face.
Has experience with or ideas about the many ways newsrooms can inform the public — from narrative investigations and features to Q&As and “how-to” explainers or visual stories.
Has experience working with others. Wisconsin Watch is a deeply collaborative organization. Our journalists frequently team up with each other or with colleagues at other news outlets to maximize the potential impact of our reporting.
Bonus skills:
Be able to analyze and visually present data.
Familiarity with Wisconsin, its history and its politics.
Multimedia skills including photography, audio and video.
Ability to communicate multiple languages, particularly Spanish.
Location: The pathways to success reporter will be located in northeast Wisconsin.
Salary and benefits: The salary range is $45,500-$64,500. 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: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.
If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Managing Editor Jim Malewitz at jmalewitz@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.
For a data journalist, this removal and possible manipulation of federal data are concerning and frustrating because it limits the information we can use to make sense of our world.
What exactly is data journalism? The term might confuse some people. To me it means using numbers to investigate inequity and injustice and find patterns and anomalies in an otherwise anecdotal world.
Credible and accessible federal, state and local data make such investigations possible, allowing us to identify solutions to challenges that affect Wisconsin communities. Journalists are hardly the only people to rely on such data. Federal data sets are used by researchers, public officials and students across the world to understand our communities.
Certain changes to government websites under a new president are relatively common, as illustrated by the End of Term web archive. The archive has, since 2008, preserved information from government websites at the end of presidential terms — collecting terabytes of information. The difference this time? The Trump administration has sought to tear apart full data sets to remove information it doesn’t like, particularly data related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
A stark example is the Youth Risk Behavior Survey — a nationally representative study that “measures health-related behaviors and experiences that can lead to death and disability among youth and adults.” The survey produced volumes of data, which could help communities understand how race, mental health, gender identity and sexual orientation shape health-related behaviors. The data was temporarily taken offline until a court order required the Department of Health and Human Services to restore the website.
A note on the website now says, in part: “This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”
Still, like with other restored websites, we don’t know whether information has been scrubbed or changed to conform with the Trump administration’s worldview. We don’t know whether other data or information will change without notice.
But these archivists can save only what is already available. They can’t tell us what is being removed or manipulated before data reaches the public. They can’t tell us what information is being kept secret. Americans have long disagreed on politics, and that’s OK. Partisan debate is healthy and necessary in a democracy. But partisanship is now sowing mistrust in the data we rely on to tell the American story.
And right now? We need concrete facts more than ever.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the firehose of news stories documenting Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, I don’t blame you. I feel the same way, even though it’s my job to stay plugged in.
Whether you love or loathe the sweeping change in Washington, this much is clear: It will deeply affect the lives of Wisconsin residents. For many people, that’s already begun — whether they rely on a canceled contract, lost their federal job or face a service disruption.
The sheer volume of consequential storylines worth exploring could paralyze journalists, tempting them to spend more time reacting to officials than listening to the public’s information needs.
As Wisconsin Watch considers how best to keep communities connected and informed, we’re trying to stick to our strengths. Among them:
Bottom-up reporting that prioritizes your questions and tips — like Phoebe Petrovic’s story on disrupted transgender care services at Children’s Wisconsin hospital in Milwaukee, or Addie Costello’s ongoing coverage of what potential cuts to Medicaid funding mean for residents. (Watch for more localized Medicaid stories in the coming weeks.)
Collaboration — because no newsroom can cover everything alone. Wisconsin Watch distributes our reporting for free and often teams up with other newsrooms on big stories. But we also strive to amplify the stellar work of our partners. That means rounding up top headlines in our Wisconsin Weekly newsletter or republishing stories from other partners that generously share their work, such as WPR, Floodlight, ProPublica and the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. We also use our Associated Press subscription to bring you some of the biggest stories of the day, unobscured by paywalls.
As we forge ahead into an unpredictable future, we hope to hear from you. Please keep sending us your tips, questions and feedback. We’ll do our best to respond to the moment.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
How we’re covering federal upheaval 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.
Addie Costello here, Wisconsin Watch reporter and WPR investigative reporting fellow. Most of my reporting focuses on issues related to health care, and my editor asked me to write a bit about how tips have shaped my stories.
First, you have to know that I have an unbreakable phone pacing habit. My family mocks the little circles I make — in and out of the kitchen and up and down the living room — when I get a call. Sometimes I spend hours a week pacing across our newsroom.
While walking back and forth in our office hallway as many as 20 times a day can get tiring, the reason I’m doing it always gets me excited, particularly when I’m calling people who filled out our tip form.
Still, many of the people I talk to don’t end up in my stories, at least not immediately.
That’s not because their stories aren’t interesting or important. Usually it’s just a timing issue. Sometimes my plate is already full with other stories, or another newsroom may have covered something similar. We strive to focus on stories other newsrooms haven’t told. But the conversations always prove helpful. Hearing about the same issue again and again helps us better understand it and realize how many people it affects.
So, if you’ve ever talked to me as I paced around the Wisconsin Watch office, thank you. And if you think you might have a story, send us a tip. It will do more than help me reach my step goals for the day.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On Jan. 22, Wisconsin Watch reporter Hallie Claflin and photojournalist Joe Timmerman joined a group of volunteers in Jefferson County overnight to observe the annual “point in time” count of the homeless population. These counts are conducted on the same night in January across the country to provide a one-night snapshot of homelessness.
What did they find? A pair of dedicated volunteers and a count that, while increasing, still struggles to capture the true homeless population, especially in rural areas.
What made us interested in observing the PIT count?
In December, we traveled four hours to the small town of Shell Lake where a homeless father and daughter who had been living in their car for over a year gave us a glimpse into their everyday lives. After extensively investigating the rural homelessness crisis across the state, we realized this family wouldn’t have shown up in the January PIT count because they were temporarily staying in a friend’s basement.
We wanted to understand who actually gets counted, and who doesn’t. The unhoused population is increasing, but who is missing from the data?
What we saw
After attending Gov. Tony Evers’ State of the State address at the State Capitol in the evening, we hopped in the car and headed to Jefferson County for the late night count. We rode along with the volunteers as they surveyed the county. A fresh layer of snow added even more bite to the single-digit temperature, and we couldn’t stand outside for much longer than a few minutes before retreating to the heated car.
In Johnson Creek, we found cars lined up in the back of a local restaurant and truck stop. Here, several people were found sleeping in their vehicles, one with a child in the back. The volunteers, Sandy Hahn and Britanie Peaslee, were quick to give them an extra blanket. The woman and child inside had been living in the van for six months, and she was working at the restaurant.
On the drive, the pair shared stories about past PIT counts they had participated in. We followed along as they drove through parking lots, checked around corners, went into public bathrooms, searched rest stops, and asked gas station workers if they had seen anyone who was unhoused.
Another person sleeping in a car wouldn’t engage with them. Because of this, they couldn’t verbally verify that they were homeless, which means they weren’t included in the official count. The car was running — likely for warmth — and the windows were covered with blankets for privacy.
We quickly realized many unhoused people aren’t included in the count based on this rule alone, among the many other restrictions on who they can count.
The volunteers left a blanket on the windshield and continued on, acknowledging that if in their position, they would also be hesitant to talk to two strangers at 2 a.m. in the snow.
Peaslee and Hahn were thorough in their search and were one of four groups covering the county.
It was clear the volunteers could search all day and all night and still never find a fraction of the total population, but they do their best with the guidelines they are given.
We parted ways around 4 a.m. — barely staying awake — and made it back to our warm apartments by 4:30.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Bennet Goldstein: Water cooler conversations rarely get as quirky as strategizing the best ways to obtain photographs of cute, occasionally destructive rodents. But for nearly a month it was all I could discuss.
From equipment purchases to road trip plotting, our team’s preparation to spot a beaver was either a lesson in steadfast resolve or overkill.
With a car weighed down by plenty of granola, trail mix and Goldfish crackers, Wisconsin Watch photojournalist Joe Timmerman, videographer Trisha Young and I spent a stretch of October driving through Wisconsin’s Driftless Area and Central Sands to report a series of solutions-focused news stories. We sought to learn how beavers and their dams could mitigate severe flooding and drought, which Wisconsin and other Midwestern states increasingly face due to climate change.
Wisconsin Watch reporter Bennet Goldstein drives down the highway at sunrise to meet with a source during a multi-day reporting trip with Wisconsin Watch audio/video producer Trisha Young and photojournalist Joe Timmerman on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
I could not write about beavers without capturing one on camera, a task that has even on occasion flummoxed The New York Times.
Thankfully, a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network helped fund this undertaking.
We splashed through streams, bushwhacked through brush and hopscotched through reed grass to locate dry land where we might capture an image of our elusive furry target.
***
Last summer, I took a reporting trip to Viroqua for a different story with colleagues from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. There, former Vernon County Conservationist Ben Wojahn described a dilemma facing western Wisconsin communities as they consider removing failing flood control dams constructed by the federal government in the mid-1900s.
Maintaining the structures would cost more than their value, according to evaluations, but cutting gaps into them without backup protections left residents feeling insecure and unprepared for future floodwaters.
In an ideal world, Wojahn suggested, the county could bring in wood-chomping beavers to slow the flow by building nature’s dams.
What would that take?
Beaver relocation has happened before. Natural resources officials in Idaho and California famously parachuted the critters into hard-to-reach mountainous regions in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Such measures probably don’t make sense in Wisconsin, where beaver colonies polka-dot the state.
But how to find one?
Scientists warned me spotting beavers in the wild is exceptionally difficult, adding that they are typically active in the wee morning hours and at dusk. Their astute smelling and hearing senses warn them of peepers.
Wisconsin Watch reporter Bennet Goldstein tries out a hunting shroud he ordered in preparation for photographing beavers on Oct. 8, 2024, at the Wisconsin Watch office in Madison, Wis. He ultimately decided the netting was too noisy and inconvenient to use. (Coburn Dukehart / CatchLight)
Then again, these researchers had not attempted to disguise themselves as piles of grass.
I initially considered purchasing ghillie suits, but the thought of spending hours commando-crawling in an outfit meant to resemble foliage sounded unappealing.
We ruled out the prospect of wading into lake shallows because Joe had rented a camera lens worth $10,000. Shrouding ourselves beneath synthetic netting would create too much noise when we stopped to pick our noses or stretch a hamstring.
I turned to wildlife photographers.
Blogs offered many tips. One professional recommended hiding in shrubbery and shadows, but he urged the adventurous to be wary of ticks.
Then it dawned on me I might be overthinking this exercise. I could instead take inspiration from hunters who have plenty of tools for quietly stalking prey. I settled on a pop-up blind and silent swivel chair.
We needed only to locate a beaver lodge and lurk.
A beaver lodge is seen alongside trees in a pond on Katie McCullough’s property as a train rumbles down the track nearby, Oct. 23, 2024, in Rio, Wis. McCullough installed a pond leveler on her property after discovering an active beaver lodge and dam. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
***
One October afternoon, Joe and I canoed across a pond near the village of Rio. We passed pond scum and lily pad patches before arriving at a rickety duck hunting stand, its wood warped and spotted with exposed nails.
I steadied the canoe as Joe lunged for a foothold on the water-encircled platform. It wobbled under his weight. We eased the gear atop the stand as the sun hung low in the sky.
“What’s going on?” I said, bobbing in the canoe as he unfurled the blind.
Joe laughed.
“Is this the first of many firsts of the lengths to which we’re going?” I asked, recording the moment on a GoPro. “You’re going into a special wildlife viewing tent with a hunting chair and hunkering down for the next hour in hopes of spotting a rodent.”
Joe had spotty cell reception, so we agreed I would return at dusk if I didn’t hear from him first.
Wisconsin Watch investigative reporter Bennet Goldstein paddles a canoe across Katie McCullough’s pond on her property during a reporting trip, Oct. 18, 2024, in Rio, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Birds chirped as I paddled back to the car, periodically banging into submerged logs.
I hunched in the front seat, hoping to avoid agitating our host’s yappy dogs, who might scare the beavers. Perched in the host’s living room window, the canines stared me down.
“I’m in my car so they don’t hear me or smell me,” I texted Joe.
A mix of dread and boredom set in as I waited, praying this would be our only beaver-spotting attempt.
An hour passed. Sandhill cranes warbled in the distance.
Joe texted.
“It just barely stuck its head above water then dove back down but I got pictures of one!!!!”
A beaver swims across a pond on Katie McCullough’s property, Oct. 23, 2024, in Rio, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
*** A photojournalist’s view ***
Joe Timmerman: As my heartbeat quickened I shifted the camera’s gears, quietly racing to document our first beaver sighting without disturbing the natural moment.
I’ve photographed surveyors in the world’s longest cave on 16-hour expeditions, woken up hours before dawn to see Indiana’s returned bison under the rising sun and hovered inches away from bats suffering from white nose syndrome in Texas. But I had never undertaken an assignment like this.
When Bennet asked how I felt about the lengths we had taken to photograph these cunning Castorids, all I could do was laugh.
Spend pieces of a month traveling across south-central Wisconsin’s beautiful landscape to prove skeptical experts wrong — and serve our readers — by returning with photos of North America’s largest rodent?
I was all in.
After our first surprise sighting near Rio we tested our luck at an additional site. A shared hunch told us we could return home with an even better image. A few days later when we visited Jim Hoffman’s wide-spanning property at Goose Landing, I descended again into Bennet’s hunting tent before dusk.
The setting sun shines through the window of a hunting tent as Wisconsin Watch photojournalist Joe Timmerman sits inside waiting for beavers to emerge from their lodge on a property owned by Jim Hoffman, who is building a series of artificial beaver dams, Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Watch photojournalist Joe Timmerman prepares to spend multiple hours of hiding in a hunting tent to photograph beavers, Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
An hour passed. The sun’s setting silhouetted the once-golden, green and yellow surroundings. Then another 30 minutes. My eyes darted between the beavers’ lodge across the pond and their trail to some felled trees nearby that Hoffman had showed us.
A slight movement caught my attention. My eye recognized the unmistakable slicked-back head of a beaver swimming across the pond. Then a second head popped up, and a third.
I zoomed in all the way, pushing our old company camera to the max in the darkening conditions. The mere seconds of opportunity etched the beaver images into the memory card before the animals disappeared beneath the water’s surface.
I waited another 30 minutes before calling it quits due to the lack of natural light. I stepped out of the tent and began packing up our gear, somewhat content but wanting more.
That’s when I saw a beaver swimming directly toward me. I fumbled to pick the camera off the ground, manually spinning the sight into focus when the beaver’s tail slapped the water, sounding a thunderous echo that made me jump.
After spending 11 hours that day making over 1,200 images, I couldn’t believe my sleepy eyes. I flipped through the first few pictures of the tail slap only to discover they were comically out of focus.
A screenshot of Wisconsin Watch photojournalist Joe Timmerman’s Photo Mechanic software shows a sequence of images of beavers swimming across a pond on the property of Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, as the sun sets Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis.
Moments later, a reprieve. The beaver re-emerged, seeming to look at me as it swam nearby — offering a fresh opportunity to make a better picture.
“All three of them are swimming like 20 feet away from me right now slapping their tails,” I texted Bennet and Trisha as they hid in their car.
“You could probably walk over and come see them.”
After all our silent stalking, the beavers had found us. Rather than rushing away, though, they were lingering — slapping the water to warn others of our presence. As the evening’s first stars appeared above, two swam parallelly in the pond below, putting on a show in trying to shoo us away.
Beavers swim across a pond on the property of Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, as the sun sets on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
“On our way!” Trisha replied.
*** A videojournalist’s view ***
Trisha Young: By the time Bennet and I rushed to the pond where Joe was photographing, about five or six beavers were making their rounds on the water. Our arrival seemed to increase their resolve to show us who was boss.
Thwack! The sound of the tail slap made me jump, stopping all of us in our tracks. A short while later, another thwack, then another. The beavers would beeline toward us, slap, then circle back and repeat the admonition.“What brave creatures,” I thought. Their boldness was intimidating, and the idea of being tail-slapped or bitten by their massive teeth was terrifying. Yet I was truly starting to like these hydraulic engineering rodents.
Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, left, looks at an artificial beaver lodge he built along a pond on his property as Wisconsin Watch photojournalist Joe Timmerman, center, and audio/video producer Trisha Young, right, report on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Bennet Goldstein / Wisconsin Watch)
Bennet assured Joe and me that beavers would struggle to catch us on land. So I imagined falling to my fate into the dark, beaver-infested waters.
I’ve interacted with beavers before, always while kayaking. I was accustomed to the tail slap, which I always interpreted as a signal that I should keep it moving. But this was something special: a whole colony of beavers.
As I watched one pair of beavers swim side by side — one small, one large — I wondered whether Mama Beaver was showing her youngster how to lay down the law and make their authority known.
The sky turned far too dark for our cameras. We remained captivated by the furry varmints’ antics for about half an hour before finally obliging to their demand.
Beavers swim around a pond, seemingly trying to intimidate onlookers at Goose Landing near Alma Center, Wis. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
We headed back to the car, giddy with excitement despite the tiring day reporting at Goose Landing. The encounter was invigorating, even if our cameras couldn’t fully capture the magic we witnessed in the darkness.
The interaction reminded me of something Hoffman emphasized as we traversed the land with him: Beavers have been here for thousands of years.
A trail camera captures a beaver successfully bringing down a tree at Goose Landing. (Courtesy of Jim Hoffman)
The Ojibwe tell stories of Amik, a giant beaver who was given an extraordinary tail and reshaped land across the Midwest. In these stories, the beaver holds a place of significance alongside the wolf, bear and muskrat.
The fur trade in Wisconsin centuries ago decimated millions of beavers and other fur-bearing animals, forever altering ecosystems and Native livelihoods. Tribes were forced to compete with traders for resources, disrupting traditional ways of life.
Now, another shift is underway in wetland conservation, reviving a story about the symbiotic relationship between beavers and humans. I was grateful to glimpse these creatures and document how humans are trying to mimic their engineering to restore Wisconsin wetlands.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Phoebe Petrovic is a Wisconsin Watch investigative reporter and a fellow in ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Her reporting on extremism was also funded by the Poynter Institute. She will be discussing extremism reporting at a live Zoom event on Jan. 29 at 4 p.m. Register here.
On the day of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the violent, far-right street gang known as the Proud Boys marched down the streets of Washington, D.C. Hours later, the new president pardoned or commuted the sentences of their leaders and some 1,500 others for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, struck salutes on stage that neo-Nazis online celebrated (and Musk later downplayed). And in a nod to the Christian nationalists who boosted his campaign, Trump declared the United States would only recognize two sexes, despite science finding it’s not so simple.
It’s clear, today, that extremism reporting matters more than ever. But even just a couple of years ago, I struggled to get pitches accepted on the influence of extremist figures. Once accepted, though, one story turned into a series, each unraveling the thread of increased Christian nationalist influences on politics and, particularly, elections.
I spent the first six months of 2024 investigating Matthew Trewhella, a militant pastor known in the 1990s for his anti-abortion activism.
Trewhella had a reputation for public stunts that raised eyebrows and generated letters to the editor. He had urged an audience to buy their children rifles for Christmas. He even defended the murder of abortion providers. Surely, someone with that record would be a political pariah today, right? But the investigation found that Trewhella’s manifesto of open defiance has influenced Republicans across the country, at all levels of government.
Like others on the Christian right, Trewhella has called for defying the separation between church and state, arguing that officials must answer to God’s law first and the Constitution second. School board members, county officials, state legislators, congresspeople, even former members of Trump’s Cabinet, we found, had praised “the doctrine of the lesser magistrates,” which Trewhella claimed gave them biblical permission to disobey or defy any law, policy or court opinion. For his part, Trewhella dismissed the extremism label, telling me only those with “mundane, self-absorbed lives” would consider someone like him an extremist.
In that first story, I reported on a conservative activist who had used the doctrine as the basis of a nationwide tour, in which he said elections officials should refuse to certify equipment and results on the basis of debunked conspiracy theories. I recounted how a state senator marshaled the doctrine when urging electors to refuse certification. And I discussed the idea’s embrace by some members of the constitutional sheriffs movement, who were also stating their intent to investigate elections.
Reporting that first story, narrowly focused on one person and his impact, revealed the larger theme that would become the subject of the series: the Christian right’s influence on elections.
It was a defining feature of the 2024 presidential election, one Trump acknowledged during his inaugural address when he claimed: “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
The stories reported for Faith in Power, for the most part, took one small aspect of it at a time. We looked for gaps in the national conversation and dug into what we found, building on previous work as we went along. I had read dozens of stories about the potential intervention of poll watchers, for example, but few on poll workers. Yet soon after discovering one self-described Christian nationalist recruiting poll workers, I noticed more, and further reporting revealed a pattern.
What made this worth an investigation was not their Christianity, as one critic claimed, but rather their regurgitation of election conspiracies, disdain for the separation of church and state, and stated goal of helping Trump win office. It was the combination of prophecy and proclamations — that Trump had a divine mandate to become president — and the way they used that to enlist support from hundreds or thousands of people on the ground.
To report these stories, to get the theology and context right, required extensive reading. We decided, in the end, to try to help memorialize what we learned and transform it into a more permanent resource for readers in a “guide” to Christian nationalism. It’s not a traditional investigative piece, but rather a meta-report that helps orient the public, helping to explain how we got to the point where the investigations we broke about poll workers or sheriffs claiming a divine right to disobey the government was even possible.
As the new administration takes office, I’m reflecting on the political trends of the last decade. First, media rushed to cover the “Alt-Right.” Then, the coverage seemed to subside. But the movement didn’t disappear — its ideas just became integrated into the larger political right. Same, too, with conspiracy theories about elections being rigged. Once Trump won, the skepticism about elections seemed to vanish overnight. A focus on “extremism” may go the same way. As those who attempted a violent insurrection get pardoned and walk free, extremism has moved from the margins to the mainstream and taken power. It’s up to journalists to draw the public’s attention to what they do with that power.
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, one of the most ambitious nonprofit local newsrooms in the country, seeks a managing editor to take NNS to new heights in journalism and community engagement. This is a key role in our 14-year-old newsroom focused on serving all of Milwaukee, with a particular focus on its Black and brown communities.
About Milwaukee NNS
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, often referred to as NNS, is an ambitious, collaborative and pioneering news organization that for 14 years has delivered fact-based reporting to communities of color in Milwaukee. In 2024, following many successful collaborations, NNS merged with Wisconsin Watch as part of a bold vision to rebuild local news in Milwaukee and across Wisconsin.
The managing editor is crucial for the vision and for driving NNS’ continued growth and impact. As NNS aims to elevate its community-focused journalism and expand its reach, a strong editorial leader is needed to ensure the delivery of high-quality, impactful content, enhance staff development and collaborate with the NNS executive director to set strategic priorities and vision. This role will amplify NNS’ impact as a vital resource for Milwaukee’s Black and brown communities.
Are you that person?
We’re looking for someone who is:
Both a champion of excellent journalism as well as a champion of the people who produce the excellent work. We seek someone with top-notch leadership skills and impeccable news judgment.
Committed to collaboration, appreciates diversity and inclusion and has a passion for coaching a talented newsroom while juggling multiple projects.
Comfortable working with community residents, students, emerging journalists and seasoned veterans to create stories that resonate with readers who often are neglected, underrepresented or misrepresented by other media outlets.
Committed to excellent community journalism and serving readers, has excellent interpersonal communication skills, is attentive to details but can see the forest from the trees.
Enthusiastic about our mission to paint a complete portrait of our neighbors by intentionally celebrating the ordinary people who do extraordinary things, connecting readers to the resources they need to navigate their lives, serving as a ferocious watchdog on their behalf, and giving them a platform to voice their opinions on issues.
At NNS, our staffers don’t parachute into our communities and then leave: We are embedded in our neighborhoods, and we remain invested in the lives of our readers.
As we inform, we believe we can transform through the power of fact-based multimedia reporting. We are looking for the person who can bring out the best in our staff and who can help us become required reading for all those interested in Milwaukee’s Black and brown communities.
In this role, you will:
Edit stories, graphics and visuals to ensure they meet the high standards of NNS for accuracy, clarity and newsworthiness.
Supervise reporters, photographers, interns and community volunteers.
Lead editorial meetings; coach and collaborate with reporters to identify and prioritize key topics, stories and impactful cross-newsroom special projects.
Assist in managing the newsroom, working collaboratively to craft strategies that further the organization’s mission, including production of efficient and timely content.
Work closely with our community engagement team, which includes News414,our community-centered engagement initiative that uses text messages, social media, events and other tools to listen to and then provide critical information to underserved audiences.
In collaboration with the executive director, help provide strategic direction and vision for the editorial team in alignment with the organization’s mission and goals.
In collaboration with the audience engagement manager, develop and execute content strategies that are revelatory and engaging and support the nonprofit mission, with the goal of getting our stories to a wider audience.
Coordinate regular training sessions to elevate the skills of staff.
Represent NNS at community events to build and maintain relationships with readers and supporters to ensure we stay embedded and connected in the communities we serve.
Collaborate with the business team to support grant applications and donor relations, as needed.
Required skills:
7+ years of journalism experience, with experience managing direct reports.
Outstanding editing, coaching, organizational and communication skills.
Demonstrated ability to multitask and consistently work on deadlines.
Experience in WordPress or similar content management systems.
Self-starting, initiative-taking attitude.
Demonstrated experience collaborating across and outside of an organization.
Curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge are an essential part of who you are.
Copy editing experience, with expertise in SEO headlines and knowledge of AP style.
Bonus skills:
Has experience setting strategic priorities and vision, including content, that advance organizational mission.
Fluent in Spanish.
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.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.
Location: The managing editor should be located in the Milwaukee area.
Salary and benefits: The salary range is $63,500-$80,000. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience. NNS 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: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.
To apply: Please submit a PDF of your resume and a cover letter explaining why you are the best candidate for this job and answer a brief question in the application form. If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Executive Director Ron Smith at rsmith@milwaukeenns.org.
On Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 4 p.m. Central time, Wisconsin Watch will host a free, live Zoom event on the topic of covering political extremism.
The event will feature a conversation between Wisconsin Watch reporter and ProPublica fellow Phoebe Petrovic and state bureau chief Matthew DeFour.
The link to RSVP is here, and full background details are below.
Throughout 2024, Wisconsin Watch reporter and ProPublica fellow Phoebe Petrovic produced multiple in-depth investigative pieces on the complex topic of extremism and the increasing influence of the religious right on American political discourse.
In July, Petrovic reported on the rising influence of militant anti-abortion activist and Wisconsin pastor Matthew Trewhella in the modern Republican Party. While he was a political pariah in the 1990s and 2000s for his extremist views, Trewhella’s teachings have been popping up in debates everywhere from local school boards to state legislatures.
In October, she showed how Trewhella was one character in a much larger story by tracing the long history of the Christian right’s efforts to influence American politics at every level. That same month, as the November election drew closer, Petrovic produced a number of investigative reports. One involved possible tax and election law violations by Vice President-elect JD Vance’s campaign. The other exposed efforts by right-wing activists to recruit poll workers in swing states.
How did Petrovic get started reporting on the topic of extremism? She will answer that question and many others in conversation with Wisconsin Watch state bureau chief Matthew DeFour, in a live Zoom event on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 4 p.m. Central time.
The event will be a webinar format and will be recorded. Attendees will be emailed a link to the recording following the event, and a selection of clips will be published to our YouTube channel.
Questions can be submitted ahead of time through the RSVP form and will also be collected during the event.
On Oct. 6, Eric Zieroth emailed us with this message: “Local homeless family unable to even use public showers that are maintained by the city government in a community that there’s no help for them in.”
Hallie and photographer Joe Timmerman made the four-hour trek from Madison to Shell Lake to learn more about Eric’s story. As the editor, one thing I emphasized was that telling the story of Eric and his daughter spending last winter in their car as they struggled with health issues, low-wage work and unaffordable housing was only the beginning of a broader story about rural homelessness.
Less than a week after Hallie was the first to report on Wisconsin’s homeless population rising above 5,000 for the first time since 2017 (despite a decline in Milwaukee), national news outlets first reported on an 18% increase in homelessness nationwide. The affordability crisis is hitting home for many in Wisconsin, and though we’ve made strides to improve housing in Milwaukee, rural areas are suffering. Many of these areas are represented by the Republicans who control the Legislature and are in position to steer resources to their communities.
Throughout the upcoming legislative budget session, Hallie will be covering how issues like rural homelessness are addressed, if at all. We’ll continue to put a human face on the problems facing society and hold politicians accountable for finding solutions.
You can help by sending us tips using this form. Or if you have a question about how state government works (or doesn’t work!), you can send it to us here.
Thanks to the dozens of people who have reached out to us in recent months. We can’t necessarily report on every tip, but we do review each one. We’re working on our system to follow up with people who submit tips we’re not well positioned to investigate — to explain why. To prioritize our resources, we focus on stories most likely to resonate with readers and improve lives.
We appreciate hearing from people who trust us with their story or ideas, even when they don’t immediately result in coverage.
After looking into rural homelessness, we saw that it checked multiple boxes for a Wisconsin Watch story.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Reading Time: 3minutesVolunteer poll worker Beverly Cooley cheers after helping Ariel Hill, 19, left, vote for the first time on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, at the Clinton & Bernice Rose Senior Center in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Watch journalists this year crisscrossed the state — from urban Madison and Milwaukee to rural Grant and Iron counties — to tell the stories that mattered to residents. They chronicled high-stakes elections, tragedies, environmental challenges and issues affecting families’ quality of life.
None of those stories would have resonated without the visual journalism our staff and freelance photographers produced. We begin every major reporting effort by considering how to best communicate it visually. That means accurately capturing the scene and emotions associated with the story — and more broadly allowing people to see themselves and their neighbors in our work.
Here are some of the most memorable images we captured in 2024.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., meets with the co-owners at Rise & Grind Cafe on Sept. 4, 2024, in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Protest organizers deliver speeches within “sight and sound” of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum as roughly 1,000 gathered on July 15, 2024, to protest the Republican National Convention. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Spectators in cowboy hats wait for the vice presidential nomination during the Republican National Convention on July 15, 2024, at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Emily Schmit and her son, Armoni Meyers. “Back to the drawing board we go,” Schmit said after learning the state’s Assembly adjourned for the year without passing legislation to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for a full year. “I don’t know how much more we can stomp and scream and yell.” (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
Nate Hagen lets his neighbor’s pet buck lick his hand on Sept. 10, 2024. His mother, Lynda, said that pets have been an important part of their family’s healing process since Nate was assaulted at school last year. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Henry Nehls-Lowe, Southern Wisconsin Trout Unlimited board secretary, nets a brown trout he caught while fly fishing in Big Spring Branch, a Class 1 trout stream, on Oct. 7, 2024, in Grant County, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch) For an upcoming story.
A beaver lodge is seen alongside trees in a pond on Katie McCullough’s property as a train rumbles down the track nearby, Oct. 23, 2024, in Rio, Wis. McCullough installed a pond leveler on her property after discovering an active beaver lodge and dam. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch) For an upcoming story.
Rosa Landa, owner of Good Hand Care AFH assisted living facility, left, laughs with resident Bebette Gaus upon finishing a walk around the neighborhood on Aug. 23, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Arlene Meyer throws an inflatable baseball to another resident during her morning ball exercises on Nov. 15, 2024, at Pine Crest Nursing Home in Merrill, Wis. Meyer has lived in the nursing home since late 2023. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Gov. Tony Evers takes questions from reporters after hosting the annual Capitol Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony on Dec. 5, 2024, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, addresses a crowd during a campaign rally on Sept. 20, 2024, at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Former President Donald Trump appears behind a large American flag at a campaign rally at the Waukesha expo center on May 1, 2024. (Jeffrey Phelps for Wisconsin Watch)
Arthur Kohl-Riggs watches the sunset and practices handstands on an oak tree in this double exposure photograph on Nov. 12, 2024, at James Madison Park in Madison, Wis. Kohl-Riggs has lived an eclectic life that includes running in the 2012 Republican gubernatorial primary as a protest candidate against Scott Walker. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Hundreds of community members gathered for a candlelit vigil at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis., on the evening of Dec. 17, 2024, one day after a school shooting left three dead at Abundant Life Christian School. (Julius Shieh for Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Watch seeks a pathways to success reporter who will expand our coverage of issues surrounding postsecondary education and workforce training. The right candidate will be a curious, collaborative, deep listener who can understand bureaucracies and economic trends that affect peoples’ lives.
Wisconsin Watch provides trustworthy reporting that investigates problems, explores solutions and serves the public. We aim to strengthen the quality of community life and self-government in Wisconsin by providing people with the knowledge they need to navigate their lives, drive forward solutions and hold those with power accountable. We pursue the truth through accurate, fair, independent, rigorous, nonpartisan reporting.
Funding cuts and other financial pressures have forced higher education institutions to rely more heavily on tuition — increasing affordability challenges for students and affecting the quality of education. Meanwhile, Wisconsin faces a shortage of skilled workers, including in manufacturing, construction, health care, agriculture and information technology. This shortage is exacerbated by an aging workforce, particularly in rural areas, and a gap between the skills employers need and those job seekers have.
Reporting on this beat will help policymakers and civic leaders understand how to expand pathways to jobs. It will also help Wisconsin residents learn the skills needed to build thriving careers. We’re taking a different approach to higher education coverage than news outlets traditionally do. Rather than prioritizing breaking news or scandals at major universities, we’re centering the experiences of learners, families, and employers to better understand how the state’s broader postsecondary landscape meets their needs. That includes paying close attention to technical colleges and trades programs.
Job duties
The reporter will:
Work with the Wisconsin Watch managing editor and other colleagues to frame, report and write news stories. These stories will appear on Wisconsin Watch platforms and be distributed to news outlets across Wisconsin and the country.
Listen to those struggling to find family supporting jobs and to those unable to fill positions to find disconnects between workforce recruitment, development and training and those who are underemployed. Find evidence-based best practices to address this challenge.
Develop sources in secondary and postsecondary education, industries struggling to fill jobs, workforce development, labor and the general public to identify breakdowns in systems, information gaps and success stories that could inform pathways to success.
Research the jobs that will be in high demand for years to come to inform reporting on effective programs for gaining the necessary skills to perform these jobs, from jobs in nursing and health care, where demographics show increasing demand, to developing technologies, such as those in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Work with the Wisconsin Watch audience team to make sure this reporting reaches the people who most need the information.
Cultivate collegial and productive relationships with collaborating news organizations to gather and analyze data, research best practices and maximize impact on stories with national scope. This includes Open Campus, a national news network aiming to improve higher education coverage.
At Wisconsin Watch we make sure that we are producing quality journalism and give our reporters the time they need to make sure the job is done well.
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:
Has researched, reported and written original published news stories and/or features on deadline.
Has demonstrated the ability to formulate compelling story pitches to editors.
Aches to report stories that explore solutions to challenges residents face.
Has experience with or ideas about the many different ways newsrooms can inform the public — from narrative investigations and features, to Q&As and ‘how-to’ explainers or visual stories.
Has experience working with others. Wisconsin Watch is a deeply collaborative organization. Our journalists frequently team up with each other or with colleagues at other news outlets to maximize the potential impact of our reporting.
Bonus Skills:
Be able to analyze and visually present data.
Familiarity with Wisconsin, its history and its politics.
Multimedia skills including photography, audio and video.
Spanish-language proficiency.
Don’t check off every box in the requirements listed above? Please apply anyway!
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to building an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible workplace that fosters a sense of belonging – so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to still consider submitting an application. You may be just the right candidate for this role or another one of our openings!
Location
The pathways to success reporter should be located in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Watch is a statewide news organization with staff based in Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay.
Salary and benefits
The salary range is $45,500-$64,500. 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
Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. For best consideration, apply by Jan. 10, 2025.
To apply
Please submit a PDF of your resume and answer some brief questions in this application form, and send links or PDFs of four published writing samples to Managing Editor Jim Malewitz at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org. Contact Jim if you’d like to chat about the job before applying.
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 especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. 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.
The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) is a national organization whose mission is to ensure that people in every community have access to trustworthy news and reliable information about issues that affect them. Today, it supports more than 475 independent newsrooms across the country to leverage their collective power – helping them raise funds, grow their audiences, and learn from each other.
Wisconsin Watch is a founding member of INN, and we are honored to be one of several local news organizations featured in INN’s 15th Anniversary video released today, explaining why independent newsrooms are so vital, and the role they play in the communities they serve.
One of the key ways that INN supports community-focused newsrooms like ours is through its annual Newsmatch campaign, which awards matching funds to member news organizations that set and reach certain goals in their end-of-year fundraising campaigns.
This year, Wisconsin Watch has a goal of getting 100 new donors between Nov 1 and Dec 31. We are nearly there, and if you aren’t already a donor, your support could make all the difference to our newsroom.
Wisconsin Watch is seeking an intern to report on information and accountability gaps in rural Wisconsin communities that lack robust news coverage, telling stories that explore solutions to broken systems and center the voices of community members.
This internship is available through a Scripps Howard Fund/Institute for Nonprofit News partnership, which in 2025 is supporting 13 paid internships for journalism students in newsrooms across the country.
Applications for the INN/Fund internships close on Jan. 31. Apply here.
The Wisconsin Watch reporter will:
Work with the Wisconsin Watch managing editor and other colleagues to frame, report and write news stories that fill information and accountability gaps and seek solutions to challenges faced by rural Wisconsin residents. These stories will appear on Wisconsin Watch platforms and be distributed to news outlets across Wisconsin.
Cultivate collegial and productive relationships with collaborating news organizations. This could include sharing bylines on high-impact stories.
At Wisconsin Watch we make sure that we are producing quality journalism and give our reporters the time they need to make sure the job is done well. Stories could take anywhere from one week to one to two months to report and write, depending on the complexity and timeliness of the issue and access to data.
This intern will be expected to work approximately 40 hours per week throughout the reporter’s time at Wisconsin Watch. No additional benefits are included.
Location
This reporter must live in Wisconsin (the exact location is negotiable) and would have opportunities to work within Wisconsin Watch’s Madison and Milwaukee newsrooms. Wisconsin Watch is a hybrid workplace, meaning work on some days can be performed remotely. But the intern would be expected to conduct some of the reporting in person, depending on the story, and would work with the managing editor to map out a schedule for occasional work from the newsroom.
Duration
This is a temporary position, with the expectation of work full time (40 hours/week) over 10 weeks.
Compensation
The reporter will earn $15 per hour.
Once selected, an intern can apply to the Fund for an additional grant to help with housing, relocation and other expenses to support the ability to accept an internship. Those applications will open in the spring.
About Wisconsin Watch
Wisconsin Watch is a nonpartisan, independent nonprofit with offices in Madison and Milwaukee.
Our mission is “to increase the quality, quantity and understanding of investigative journalism to foster an informed citizenry and strengthen democracy.” Our multimedia journalism digs into undercovered issues, documents inequitable and failing systems, puts findings into regional and national contexts and explores potential solutions. We aim to generate impact that improves people’s lives and holds power to account. Wisconsin Watch also trains diverse groups of current and future investigative journalists and entrepreneurs through workshops, internships and fellowships, mentoring and collaborations with journalism classes and news organizations. And we share information about journalistic practices, ethics and impact with the public.
Wisconsin Watch embraces diversity and inclusiveness in our journalism, training activities, hiring practices and workplace operations. The complex issues we face as a society require respect for different viewpoints. Race, class, generation, sexual orientation, gender, disability and geography all affect point of view. Reflecting these differences in our reporting leads to better, more nuanced stories and a better-informed community.
We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including Black, Indigenous and other people of color, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities.
In an era of endless social media feeds, push alerts and newsletters competing for your attention, we appreciate the time you spend with our reporting.
We work hard to produce stories with a long shelf life — those with actionable information that make you think for weeks or months after reading them. That’s why we get excited when we learn that particular stories are resonating.
As we look back on 2024, we’re highlighting the stories that seemed to most interest you, at least according to the time readers on average spent on their web pages. If you missed them earlier, perhaps that’s enough endorsement to give them a read.
If you have feedback on our work, we always want to hear it. Let us know how by emailing me at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
For nearly five years, residents and property owners in the northwest Wisconsin town of Trade Lake have clashed with a developer of a proposed $20 million pig farm. The swine breeding operation, known as Cumberland LLC, would be the state’s largest. Locals have found little comfort in answers to their questions about how the farm would impact their quality of life. (Andrew Mulhearn for Wisconsin Watch)
We published this story at the end of 2023, but folks were reading it well into 2024 and devoting more time on average than they did for any other story this year.
Reporter Bennet Goldstein illustrated how a pig farm developer failed to earn the trust of Trade Lake, Wisconsin, residents as the community learned of their vulnerability to potential environmental harms from agricultural operations. This was part of the three-part series Hogtied, which examined the political, regulatory and economic forces shaping a proposal to build Wisconsin’s largest pig farm.
ProPublica Local Reporting Network investigative reporter Phoebe Petrovic told the story of how a Waukesha County anti-abortion extremist went from political pariah to ideological influencer. Matthew Trewhella regained favor among some Republicans by exhorting local government officials to reject state and federal laws that don’t conform with God’s laws based on an obscure 16th-century theory known as “the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.”
Wisconsin Watch’s Mario Koran, in collaboration with The New York Times, investigated the checkered disciplinary records of Wisconsin prison doctors.
He found that nearly a third of the 60 staff physicians employed over the last decade were censured by a state medical board for an error or breach of ethics. Many doctors went on to face lawsuits from inmates saying that they made errors that led to serious harm, leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts. Many of the physicians would likely struggle to get hired at hospitals and in other settings because of those histories, a former state Medical Examining Board chairman told Koran.
Left to right: Michelle Bryant, WNOV; Pat Kreitlow, Civic Media; Rob Ferrett, WPR; Steve Scaffidi, WTMJ; Dan O’Donnell, WISN; Vicki McKenna, WIBA (Madeline Vogt for Wisconsin Watch)
This was part of a six-part series, Change is on the Air, produced by Wisconsin Watch and investigative journalism students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about the changing state of talk radio in Wisconsin.
In fact-checking six radio hosts across the political spectrum, the students found a disturbing reality that spoke to our current political moment: The shows spreading the most misinformation had the largest audience and most advertising. Readers also spent more time on the page of the series overview story than most other 2024 stories.
In his final story for Wisconsin Watch as a Report for America fellow, Jacob Resneck dug into the disturbing rise in police-involved deaths in Wisconsin over the past two years. The attorney general and the largest police union said the increase was due to more incidents involving armed and dangerous individuals. That’s despite the fact that violent crime is down, and such incidents make up a smaller share of incidents here than in neighboring states. Wisconsin at the time saw more fatal encounters than Illinois, despite having only half the population.
The Social Development Commission’s main office sits empty in Milwaukee on the evening of June 28, 2024. The long-troubled agency in April abruptly shut down and laid off its entire staff, creating new holes in Milwaukee’s safety net. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Addie Costello of Wisconsin Watch and WPR traced the backstory of what happened to Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission, which shuttered and laid off its entire staff in April. State and local agencies awarded the intergovernmental commission big contracts even after SDC eliminated internal auditing mechanisms. She found that SDC was created by governments but functioned outside of them. Government officials told her they largely focused on how SDC executes contracts with their individual offices — rather than broader operations issues.
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service reporter Meredith Melland contributed reporting to the investigation. She has closely chronicled other twists and turns at SDC, which provided a range of services such as emergency furnace installation, tax support, career advancement, senior companionship and rent assistance for low-income Milwaukee residents.
Monica Lo, shown on Jan. 26, 2024, has spent the last six years as an advocate and program coordinator at The Women’s Community, Inc., a nonprofit based in Wausau, Wis. She helps survivors of domestic violence who face challenges similar to those she faced in a previous relationship. (Kara Counard for Wisconsin Watch)
Reporter Zhen Wang wrote about a group of Hmong women who are pushing back against attitudes that prevent women from reporting abuse and leaving violent relationships. That includes offering safe housing, counseling and more representation in mediation processes that typically precede a divorce sanctioned by Hmong leaders. The women are also speaking out in an ongoing debate about the role patriarchal attitudes play in shaping scenarios that can prove deadly.
Federal law bans nursing homes from ousting residents for reasons related to a Medicaid transition — if the facility accepted Medicaid when they moved in. That’s not the case for assisted living facilities. (Andrew Mulhearn for Wisconsin Watch)
Assisted living can offer residents more independence and a less institutionalized setting than in traditional nursing homes. But Addie Costello of Wisconsin Watch and WPR found that assisted living residents have fewer protections for residents transitioning to Medicaid. At least four Wisconsin assisted living facilities involuntarily discharged residents who required Medicaid assistance between 2022 and 2023.
Meanwhile, Medicaid reimbursements lag far behind the cost of care, prompting some facilities to refuse to accept anything but private pay.
Imagery collected by inexpensive satellites is ushering in an era of real-time monitoring of manure-spreading practices at big farms. Some environmental advocates want the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to utilize the technology. (Madeline Vogt for Wisconsin Watch)
Reporter Bennet Goldstein last year received a cryptic Excel spreadsheet through a public records request. Although he didn’t understand it at the time, the document contained a list of potential illegal manure spreading incidents that were noticed by satellites orbiting the Earth.
That information led to this engaging story on how Stanford University researchers have used aerial photographs — snapped by satellites — to teach computers to recognize winter spreading. This all matters because applying manure atop snow or frozen soil heightens the risk of runoff, which can contaminate water, spread pathogens, seed algae blooms and kill fish.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Today we’re launching Public Square, an occasional photography series introducing your neighbors from across Wisconsin.
The project aims to highlight the roles people play in their communities throughout the state. In one story, we might profile residents finding solutions to issues facing their cities and towns. In another, we may share someone’s unique perspective on where they fit into their community.
Throughout the project, we’ll ask people the same questions and make photographs in a similar style — taking something of an informal visual census of the state. We’ll ask:
What do you love about Wisconsin, and what might you want to fix?
What issues do you care about, and how do they impact your life?
Where do you find community, and how do you feel about the future?
Finally, we’ll ask who else we should talk to and where we should next travel so our project can continue fostering connections across the state. At Wisconsin Watch, we want to do more than tell stories of people facing challenges. We want to share your everyday moments of joy, reflection and curiosity. It’s what makes this state great.
Meet your first neighbor here: Arthur Kohl-Riggs, an optimistic practitioner of handstands who works as a legal investigator and once earned thousands of votes as a protest candidate for governor.
If you know of anyone in your community who we should feature in this visual project, please email me at jtimmerman@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Login
