WCIJ investigative reporting intern Alex Arriaga interviews the family of Cesar DeLeon, a Wisconsin inmate who is being held in administrative confinement — a form of indefinite solitary confinement with no clear end date. DeLeon has been on a hunger strike to protest the treatment of Wisconsin prisoners in solitary. Credit: Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Local, independent, fact-based reporting is essential to vibrant communities and a healthy democracy. We’re rebuilding and reimagining the future of local news across Wisconsin.
(Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
Our mission
Using journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected.
Our impact
Our work helps people navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.
Our values
Our work is guided by these core values:
We are committed to service, prioritizing the needs of the communities we serve through relevant, empowering and civic-minded journalism.
Integrity drives us to report with truth, fairness and transparency, earning and maintaining public trust.
Through collaboration, we partner with organizations, residents and media outlets to amplify diverse voices and deepen our impact.
We act with initiative, identifying emerging issues and responding creatively to changing community needs.
We invest in growth by fostering a culture of learning, open communication and innovation to sustain our mission for future generations.
Who we are
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit organization dedicated to using journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected. As a nonprofit investigative news organization, we expose injustices, listen to the everyday problems in our communities and shine a light on issues that too often go unnoticed. Every story we publish is rigorously fact-checked to ensure accuracy, fairness and impact.
We don’t just report the news — we connect communities. By collaborating with news organizations across Wisconsin and beyond, we expand the reach of our reporting, ensuring critical stories reach the people who need them most. Our multimedia investigations appear on WisconsinWatch.org and are republished by hundreds of outlets statewide.
Wisconsin Watch is home to multiple newsrooms and teams that work together to strengthen local journalism and amplify underrepresented voices:
Our statewide newsroom uncovers systemic issues affecting communities across Wisconsin, putting local challenges into broader context.
That newsroom’s statehouse bureau covers state and local government, ensuring our readers understand how the decisions made in the capital impact communities across Wisconsin.
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS), an independent community-based newsroom in Milwaukee that delivers deeply rooted, community-driven reporting on issues that matter to Milwaukee’s central city and communities of color.
Our northeast Wisconsin bureau is built around community connection, accountability and public participation. Aside from publishing stories, it exists to build a conversation with the people who live and work in northeast Wisconsin.
By exposing the truth, we spark change that improves communities across Wisconsin.
How do you know you can trust our work?
It’s harder than ever to know which information to trust. The sheer volume of news, opinions and misinformation online can make it difficult to separate credible reporting from content that isn’t grounded in facts. We understand that skepticism, and we believe trust must be earned, not assumed.
At Wisconsin Watch, our reporting is built on a commitment to transparency, accuracy and the public interest. We’re part of a network of respected journalism organizations that hold us accountable to high standards:
We are a founding member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a community of nonprofit newsrooms dedicated to investigative reporting that serves the public.
We participate in the Trust Project, a global initiative that developed transparency standards — called Trust Indicators — to help you evaluate the credibility of our work and understand how our journalism is produced.
Through the CatchLight Local Visual Desk, we collaborate with other newsrooms to strengthen visual storytelling and make high-quality journalism more accessible.
As a member of Gigafact, we publish Fact Briefs that quickly and clearly respond to widely shared claims, helping set the record straight.
These partnerships don’t replace your judgment; they’re one way we show our work and invite scrutiny. We encourage you to explore our methods, review our sources when available and hold us accountable. Trust in journalism starts with openness, and we’re committed to providing it.
A windowless office — outfitted with a dry erase board, recycled desks and thick files from WisconsinWatch investigations — is known to journalists across the country as the “Northern Bureau.”
It’s where I and other University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students have passed from the school to a WisconsinWatch internship and learned an important lesson about working as an investigative journalist: It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.
WCIJ investigative reporting intern Alex Arriaga interviews the family of Cesar DeLeon, a Wisconsin inmate who is being held in administrative confinement — a form of indefinite solitary confinement with no clear end date. DeLeon has been on a hunger strike to protest the treatment of Wisconsin prisoners in solitary. Credit: Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
You’ve read the reports produced by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, complete with visuals, portraits and artwork that are often featured by publications across the state and nation. They’ve shed light on the dark money and political maneuvers that take power away from regular citizens, tracked the increase in acts of hate and bias following the 2016 election, and chronicled the value immigrants bring to the state.
Behind these essential stories and the shiny awards they receive, the entire team at WisconsinWatch rolls up their sleeves to analyze records, track down sources and engage with the communities affected by the issues covered. At the end of it all, they spend hours meticulously checking every fact in the report until it’s bulletproof.
There is no classroom that can provide this kind of hands-on experience. And it works — alumni from WisconsinWatch work all over the world reproducing the quality of journalism we all learned. I’m back in my hometown, covering exciting Chicago stories such as the mayoral election for the Chicago Sun-Times.
And another important note: Internships at Wisconsin Watch are paid. So if you’d like to have a hand in training the next generation of reporters who will hold your public officials accountable, consider making a contribution before the end of the year. NewsMatch, a national campaign to encourage grassroots support of nonprofit news, will give your donation extra impact until Dec. 31 by matching your gift.
All donations to the Center are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law. You can make a gift securely via credit card or mail a check to Wisconsin Watch, P.O. Box 5079, Milwaukee, WI 53205.
I’ll always be grateful for the learning opportunity I had as an intern at WisconsinWatch.
Thanks for making that a possibility for the next generation of investigative journalists!
The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
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‘I’ll always be grateful’: Support the next generation of investigative journalists
by Alexandra Arriaga, Wisconsin Watch December 28, 2018
