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)
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Using journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected.
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Our work helps people navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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Opinion: Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
Publication of letters to the editor, guest columns and other opinion material does not imply endorsement by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Authors are solely responsible for the facts and views expressed in opinion material published by the Center.
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I’m looking forward to Wisconsin Watch’s “new look.”
As someone who spent 30 years as a Chicago print journalist, I’m always interested in any new developments that deal with how the media attend to their primary responsibility: The search for the truth.
I’m hoping that your new look includes a fresh approach to covering our federally-created immigration crisis. Your May piece by Natalie Yahr about illegals detained at our border reinforces the growing argument that our media is doing this country no favors by continuing to cover the immigration issue from just one perspective, i.e. “us vs. them.”
This nation’s reckless and irresponsible immigration policy affects all of us on a daily basis, but after years of reading so many sob-sister stories about this subject, I can’t help but come away with the belief that only the foreign-born are entitled to search for a better life in this country.
Our organization supports the recommendations of President Clinton’s immigration reform commission chaired by the late civil rights icon Barbara Jordan, i.e. the need for an immigration policy that works in the national interest that most certainly does not include the continued rewarding of people who enter this country illegally.
If you are truly dedicated to “investigative” journalism, then you might start with the question of why the media have never bothered to explain why our immigration system is “broken” and who broke it.
From there your reporters should begin asking what kind of immigration policy is best for this republic, not just those who benefit most from mass immigration, i.e. our vote-hungry and derelict politicians, and a business community that gorges itself at the cheap labor buffet.
In short, Americans are a sovereign people and as such have the inalienable right to determine who and how many foreign-born should be given the privilege – not the right – to live among us, always remaining mindful of the fact that our population explosion is wreaking havoc on our environment and our quality of life.
The short-term agendas of our immoral politicians and their corporate paramours must not be allowed to undermine the principles on which this nation was founded.
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has a responsibility to step up on this public policy issue that currently benefits only the few at the expense of the many. You and your colleagues may feel immune from the effects of our unsustainable population growth, but your descendants will not have that luxury.
Sincerely,
Dave Gorak
Executive Director
Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration
La Valle, Wis.
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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Wisconsin Watch’s ‘new look’
by Dave Gorak / Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration, Wisconsin Watch June 10, 2019
