News & Announcements

Bill Lueders, editor of The Progressive and president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, will be inducted this month into the National Freedom of Information Coalition’s State Open Government Hall of Fame.

Lueders is one of four inductees who will be honored during a virtual ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 30. Joining Lueders in the Hall of Fame class are Barbara Petersen of Florida, Jane Briggs-Bunting of Michigan and Craig Staudenmaier of Pennsylvania.

• RELATED: 2021 National FOI Summit to be held virtual on Sept. 28-29

The National Newspaper Association Foundation has launched a new postal education program named after longtime NNA postal guru Max Heath, who died on July 28 at age 75.

The Max Heath Postal Institute will focus on educating newspapers and printers on the best practices within the U.S postal system. Memorial donations made to the NNA Foundation in Heath's honor will be dedicated to the postal training fund. 

Gannett Co. Inc., parent company of the Wausau Daily Herald, has sold the newspaper's longtime home at 800 Scott St.

The Daily Herald offices had been located in the building since 1958. The newspaper will lease space in the building, which it reports was sold to Bauer's Mega Storage, a Wausau-area company. With the sale, Gannett no longer owns any of the buildings that for decades had housed its central Wisconsin newspapers.

The Wisconsin Newspaper Association is accepting nominations for the 2021 Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame class through Monday, Sept. 13. Inductees will be announced by Sept. 30, and recognized on Thursday, Nov. 18, at The Madison Club.

Nominations are open to anyone — living or deceased — who has contributed above and beyond the call of duty to the Wisconsin newspaper industry. This includes publishers, editors, reporters, photographers or any other newspaper personnel who’ve made significant contributions to the industry. It is expected that the individual should have dedicated at least 15 years to newspapering. However, length of service is not a major determinant.

O'Rourke Media Group, which publishes several Wisconsin newspapers, has partnered with media services company Modulist, the companies announced Tuesday. Through the partnership, Modulist will handle the processing of obituaries, business announcements and personal milestones, as well as create an online portal through which readers, funeral homes and other businesses can quickly and easily submit listings.

O'Rourke Media Group, which launched in October 2018, publishes the (Hudson) Star-Observer, Ripon Commonwealth Press, and (Kiel) Tri-County News. It also recently acquired Unified Newspaper Group, which includes four suburban Madison weekly newspapers: the Fitchburg Star, The Oregon Observer, The Stoughton Courier Hub and The Verona Press.

The American Journalism Project has awarded a $1.4 million grant to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service to be distributed over three years, WCIJ announced Friday.

The grant is intended to support the efforts by WCIJ and NNS to reshape local news in Milwaukee and across the state and will help them support additional staff positions. The two nonprofits have partnered since spring 2020 on the News414 project, which uses text messages, social media and other tools to provide important news to underserved audiences in the Milwaukee area.