A great way to stay informed without feeling overwhelmed. 👍
Wisconsin Watch criminal justice reporting project manager Phoebe Petrovic interviews Laura Nirider, Brendan Dasseys attorney, from the Center on Wrongful Convictions, after a press conference at The Park Hotel in Madison, Wis., on Oct. 2, 2019. Petrovic works with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism as the Criminal Justice Reporting Project Manager. Credit: Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch
Wisconsin Watch is pleased to announce that radio journalist Phoebe Petrovic has been hired as a Report for America corps member to investigate criminal justice issues.
The Center’s new Report for America reporter will investigate criminal justice issues in Wisconsin, with a focus on officials who fail to act in the best interest of justice — and whether they are held accountable for their actions.
Send us a tip
Have a story tip that our new Report for America reporter should pursue? Send it to: tips@wisconsinwatch.org or Wisconsin Watch, P.O. Box 5079, Milwaukee, WI 53205
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.
Wisconsin Watch, operated by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, was one of 50 newsrooms across the country chosen to host a Report for America reporter in 2019. A total of 61 reporters will fan out across 28 states and Puerto Rico; 11 of them are returning corps members who were chosen in 2018.
Report for America is a national service program that places talented early-career journalists into local news organizations to report for one to two years on undercovered issues and communities. An initiative of The GroundTruth Project, Report for America addresses an urgent need in American journalism at a time when local news deserts threaten our democracy like never before.
Petrovic was a finalist from a pool of nearly 1,000 applicants to be a Report for America corps member. She will spearhead Wisconsin Watch’s investigation into police and prosecutorial misconduct and possible wrongful convictions in Wisconsin. Petrovic is currently the Lee Ester News Fellow for Wisconsin Public Radio. She will begin her new job in June.
“The quality of the applicant pool was mind-boggling, and their spirit — the commitment to local journalism as public service — was genuinely inspiring,” said Steven Waldman, co-founder and president of Report for America.
A 2018 graduate of Yale University, Petrovic was an intern with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and a freelance producer for Here & Now, a program of WBUR public radio in Boston featuring in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Petrovic also produced a podcast for the Yale University Art Gallery — developing skills she will put to use during her time at Wisconsin Watch.
“I’m thrilled to join Wisconsin Watch to report on criminal justice misconduct. I’ve admired the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s dogged team and hard-hitting work for a long while, and it’s a dream for me to join its ranks,” Petrovic said. “We’ve got important stories to tell, an exciting project to create and a whole lot of work to do — and I can’t wait to dig in.”
Petrovic was a finalist from a pool of nearly 1,000 applicants to be a Report for America corps member. While working at the Center, she will spearhead Wisconsin Watch’s investigation into police and prosecutorial misconduct and possible wrongful convictions in Wisconsin. She is seen here working at Wisconsin Public Radio on April 23. Credit: Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Report for America pays half of a corps member’s salary, with news partners responsible for the other half, plus benefits and other expenses.
“Report for America promotes new models for shared investment in local journalism, increasing the chances of sustaining watchdog community reporting, for the community, by the community,” said Charles Sennott, CEO and editor-in-chief of the GroundTruth Project, which launched Report for America in 2017.
Andy Hall, executive director and co-founder of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, said the hiring of Petrovic in collaboration with Report for America exemplifies the power of emerging models to reinvigorate local and state investigative journalism.
“The public,” Hall said, “plays a growing and critical role in supporting nonpartisan, authoritative journalism — in Wisconsin and across the nation — that informs residents, holds power to account and strengthens our democracy. We will freely share the results of our reporting, to make Wisconsin a better state.”
The Center is an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization.It increases the quality, quantity and understanding of investigative reporting in Wisconsin, while training current and future investigative journalists. Its work fosters an informed citizenry and strengthens democracy while guided by three principles: Protect the vulnerable. Expose wrongdoing. Explore solutions.
Wisconsin Watch has produced more than 350 major reports since 2009, which are made available for free on its website, WisconsinWatch.org,and to news organizations across the state and country.
More than 800 newsrooms have published, broadcast or cited Wisconsin Watch’s stories, reaching an estimated audience of more than 82 million. More information is available at:https://wisconsinwatch.org/about/
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.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Scroll down to copy and paste the code of our article into your CMS. The codes for images, graphics and other embeddable elements may not transfer exactly as they appear on our site.
*** Also, the code below will NOT copy the featured image on the page. You are welcome to download the main image as a separate element for publication with this story. ***
You are welcome to republish our articles for free using the following ground rules.
Credit should be given, in this format: “By Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin Watch”
Editing material is prohibited, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and in-house style (for example, using “Waunakee, Wis.” instead of “Waunakee” or changing “yesterday” to “last week”)
Other than minor cosmetic and font changes, you may not change the structural appearance or visual format of a story.
If published online, you must include the links and link to wisconsinwatch.org
If you share the story on social media, please mention @wisconsinwatch (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), and ensure that the original featured image associated with the story is visible on the social media post.
Don’t sell the story or any part of it — it may not be marketed as a product.
Don’t extract, store or resell Wisconsin Watch content as a database.
Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
Additional elements that are packaged with our story must be labeled.
Users can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements ONLY with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use.
If we send you a request to change or remove Wisconsin Watch content from your site, you must agree to do so immediately.
For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Jeff Bauer, digital editor and producer, at jbauer@wisconsinwatch.org
Wisconsin Watch’s Report for America corps member will investigate criminal justice issues
by Wisconsin Watch, Wisconsin Watch April 25, 2019
