News & Announcements

Nearly five months after Isthmus announced in March it was shutting down indefinitely due to the pandemic, the Madison alternative weekly has decided to become a nonprofit news organization.

While the details of the transition to nonprofit status remain uncertain, it will allow Isthmus to seek funding in ways it could not previously, such as foundation grants and tax-deductible donations from readers and local businesses.

• RELATED: WNA Foundation announces Wisconsin Community News Fund

Beginning with Thursday’s issue, subscribers to Buffalo County’s three weeklies will receive a newly merged newspaper, the Buffalo County News.

The newspapers last week announced the (Alma) Buffalo County Journal, Mondovi Herald-News and Cochrane-Fountain City Recorder would be merged to form one newspaper serving the entire county. All three newspapers shared the same parent company, Media One.

Report for America applications are now open for news organizations interested in hosting emerging journalists for up to three years, beginning next June.

The national service places talented journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. The program recruits journalists and pays half the salary, up to $20,000. The other half is split between the host news organization and local donors.

WNA members are encouraged to contact their lawmakers and ask them to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act.

The bipartisan legislation provides direct financial incentives to support local journalism. Proposed tax credits include credit for local newspaper subscriptions, payroll credit for compensation of journalists and credit for advertising in local newspapers and local media.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and the Center for Journalism Ethics at UW-Madison are partnering on a project to support election integrity this fall, the organizations have announced.

The effort, supported by $83,000 in funding from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, will focus on developing election integrity resource kits for citizens and journalists in addition to investigative reporting on voting issues in Wisconsin. Howard Hardee, a former Wisconsin State Journal reporter and current local news fellow at First Draft News, will be the lead reporter on the project.

The National Newspaper Association is seeking judges for its 2020 Better Newspaper Editorial Contest & Better Newspaper Advertising Contest.

All judging is done online and is user-friendly. Judges will be assigned early July and the deadline for judging will be late July.

The Associated Press has changed its writing style guide to capitalize the “b” in the term Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context, weighing in on a hotly debated issue.

The news organization will also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.

The Beloit Daily News will move this fall to a new office in downtown Beloit, the newspaper announced Wednesday.

The move to 444 E. Grand Ave., a building that formerly housed Turtle Creek Books, is expected to take place in September. The facility will house the Daily News editorial, advertising, subscriber and business operations, while printing and distribution will continue to be based out of Janesville.