Wisconsin Watch, Milwaukee Neighborhood Information Service merge

Studying Time: 3 minutes

Wisconsin Watch has joined forces with Milwaukee Neighborhood Information Service (NNS) to launch an thrilling new chapter by which we work collectively to deliver communities the information and knowledge most essential to them.

Our partnership has been years within the making. After working collectively for a number of years on information tasks, we started teaming as much as elevate key fundraising assist that can enable each operations to flourish. Our partnership has yielded many modern tasks, together with the News414 textual content reporting system, the place we ship very important information to people who also can textual content questions and tricks to us.

Now we’re working to construct a brighter future for native information in Wisconsin upon that basis of collaboration.

NNS will proceed to function as an impartial newsroom below its founding mission to serve, empower and interact the town of Milwaukee with community-focused information. Your complete NNS workers has joined Wisconsin Watch, together with Ron Smith, government director, who shall be enshrined subsequent month within the Milwaukee Press Membership Corridor of Fame; Tannette Elie, managing editor, just lately named president of the Milwaukee chapter of the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists; and PrincessSafiya Byers, a finalist for the celebrated nationwide Loeb Awards for her collaboration with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the challenges residents face when out-of-state buyers purchase rental properties in distressed neighborhoods.

We’re excited that the American Journalism Mission (AJP) believes in our mission and has invested in our partnership. In 2021, Wisconsin Watch and NNS shared a capacity-building grant from the American Journalism Mission, the nation’s first enterprise philanthropy devoted to nonprofit native information. AJP has elevated its funding to assist our strategic progress in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. 

“Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood Information Service are very important to the way forward for native information in Wisconsin. We’re proud to accomplice with them on this strategic merger,” stated Jason Alcorn, vice chairman for progress investments at AJP. “Collectively, they won’t solely broaden their attain but in addition strengthen their group and improve their means to serve the general public with high-quality, reliable journalism that empowers communities and holds establishments accountable.”

Our function at Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood Information Service is to ask questions our neighbors need answered, perceive obstacles they’re struggling to beat, uncover wrongs they hope to proper – and produce treatments to gentle. That is how we resolve issues and strengthen communities in our democracy.

Each organizations rose to fill rising gaps in native protection as industrial information shops have been compelled to cut back prices after new applied sciences modified the best way folks store, promote and get their information. Given the lack of reporters overlaying native authorities and group life, we should nurture collaborative efforts, the place newsrooms work collectively to assemble the assets mandatory to inform the tales that matter most. We have to use each native reporter we’ve nonetheless acquired in Wisconsin and construct from there.

As an area nonprofit with a mission of offering impactful reporting — and sharing it freely — Wisconsin Watch is the information group greatest suited to encourage this collaborative effort throughout our state. Strengthened by our mixture with NNS, we’ll take heed to be taught of essentially the most urgent info wants in Milwaukee and throughout Wisconsin, then discover methods to fill them.

For instance:

In 2022 Wisconsin Watch launched a statehouse bureau that gives reliable, nonpartisan reporting and fact-checking to greater than 200 information shops throughout the state. We’re not duplicating what different reporters are doing, however offering statewide audiences with key accountability journalism not obtainable from different sources.

We’re build up our statewide investigative muscle to supply our companies as an in-depth reporting staff for all newsrooms within the state that now not have the assets to dig deep. This sort of reporting is crucial to uncovering wrongdoing and bringing real-world options to gentle, so we the folks can demand higher. 

We’re discovering methods to serve people who aren’t getting sufficient correct, fact-based native information at the moment. A living proof: We’re taking our truth checks and political reporting, in addition to highlights from our investigations, and changing them into radio reviews and social video shorts. The audio codecs, shared freely with radio stations, will ship reliable native information to areas of the state with low broadband entry and utilization; the video shorts shall be shared on social networks the place younger audiences more and more get their information and knowledge. 

These are just some examples. We are able to solely fill these crucial gaps with assist from supporters such as you. Please take into account donating to Wisconsin Watch and NNS at the moment. 

In the event you’d wish to be taught extra about contributing to our work, please attain out to our director of philanthropy, Anna January, at ajanuary@wisconsinwatch.org.

Thanks!