The following letter from WNA President George Stanley was originally published by Wisconsin Watch, as part of the nonprofit news organization’s Year in Review series.
Dear friends,
Thank you for supporting trustworthy reporting that informs the people of Wisconsin and upholds our democratic way of life. We’re going to need this kind of journalism more than ever in 2024, as those seeking power focus on Wisconsin — one of a handful of states likely to determine who wins the Electoral College.
This will be challenging as our state has lost more than half of its news reporters in just 15 years, according to the 2023 State of Local News Report by Northwestern University. Newsroom cuts have left large swaths of Wisconsin with minimal coverage of local government and civic participation — a gap that contributes to the fracturing of communities, undue hardships for people navigating through everyday life and declining trust in our democratic institutions to find effective solutions.
For more than two centuries, news outlets from America’s smallest towns to its biggest cities were supported by a business model based on local commerce – retail advertisers, auto dealers, real estate, neighbors selling to one another through classified ads. The ads ran next to news read by most households in the community. Then, 21st century technologies changed how people shop and receive news.
In 1999, I was managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel when it set revenue and profit records. Its two biggest advertisers were Boston Store and American TV; 40% of income came from classified ads. The classifieds vanished over the next 10 years with the arrival of Craigslist and other free national digital services. Boston Store, American TV and many other local retailers have gone out of business. As the president of American explained, their stores became “showrooms for Amazon,” where shoppers would see something they liked, search for it on their phone, find it on sale somewhere else in the nation, and order it delivered to their door.
The Journal Sentinel wound up being sold to one out-of-state chain and then another. The same thing has happened to Wisconsin’s other daily newspapers, commercial broadcast stations and, most recently, to a large number of weekly newspapers.
Wisconsin Watch works collaboratively with all nonpartisan news outlets that share our values and standards. We must work together to fill gaps and tell stories that matter most.
Wisconsin Watch launched a statehouse bureau in 2022 that provides reporting to more than 200 news outlets across the state. We’re not duplicating what other state reporters are doing but working alongside them and providing audiences across Wisconsin with key accountability, fact checking and investigative stories.
Last month, we expanded that service with an offer to all members of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association: If they suspect or uncover wrongdoing, corruption, incompetence, but don’t have the resources to investigate, bring it to Wisconsin Watch. We will work to recruit the skills needed to tell these stories to the best of our ability. We will also search for best-practice solutions and share these stories freely to maximize impact.
We’ve helped build a new model of local cooperation over the past three years with the NEW News Lab of Northeastern Wisconsin. With support from the Green Bay and Fox Valley Community Foundations, Wisconsin Watch collaborates with the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the Post-Crescent of Appleton, the Press-Times of Brown County, Fox Valley 365 and Wisconsin Public Radio. We focus on stories key to the health of our communities — about families struggling to find child care and senior care, abuse of authority by prosecutors and judges, and pathways to employment for refugees who had helped our troops in Afghanistan.
We aim to build upon this success and bring it to other regions. In some cases, that growth is occurring organically. Working with our NEW News Lab partners, for example, led to a cooperative investigation of sexual harassment within the Sheboygan Police Department. We uncovered a disinformation campaign fueling a controversy pitting neighbor against neighbor in Kiel – including bomb threats and cancellation of the town’s Memorial Day Parade. Our truthful reporting helped the good people of Kiel regain control. Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project, gave a poignant speech about our Kiel coverage in December.
We are launching a new Monday newsletter with the new year. Forward offers a look ahead at the week in Wisconsin government and politics, with an emphasis on issues that impact lives. Readers will learn about upcoming hearings, bills and events that merit their attention. And they’ll have a direct line to Wisconsin Watch’s state reporting team. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
We’re launching these services with urgency to answer key questions of Wisconsin residents throughout the 2024 election campaign.
Now is time to rebuild a sustainable system for reporting news you can count on for the truth. This effort must begin at the local level and be supported by concerned citizens. Please help us.
Thank you!
This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
