 Many newsrooms in Wisconsin and across the country have essentially become hollowed out. They've lost 30 to 40 percent of their reporting workforce. Investigative reporting takes a lot of time and money, a lot of investment, so what we do is we provide these stories for free to all of the editors of the state of Wisconsin and beyond. When I was at the Presquizet, the center was just starting out and they did some really great work. It was timely, relevant, and hit on a lot of issues that were important to our readers. The newspaper had gone through three rounds of layoffs, so it really filled that gap for us. There are very few places today that do the same level of deep investigative journalism on a local and state level as some of the big newspapers like The Washington Post where I work. And the local level is actually as important or more important. So the Center for Investigative Journalism is providing an incredibly important service. So far, about 600 news organizations have used or cited our content and our goal of course is to inform the citizenry and strengthen our democracy. We are not an advocacy organization. We're not trying to cater to one political party or the other and that's part of how we keep our legitimacy. We have a marvelous relationship with the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the students really drive our projects forward. We also hire paid student interns whose offices are right here in Vilas Hall. They're right there out in the trenches doing the interviewing, analyzing the data, coming up with our findings, accessing public records, holding powerful officials to account. You know, we're doing original reporting. We're not just getting quotes and filing the story. We're really talking to people, getting the data that we need to support whatever we're saying. The most important stories the Center has done involve frax hand mining, whistle blowers, and the failure of the state to protect them, water quality issues. These are stories that are critically important to most of us and they need to be told and they involve no political bias at all. They're exceptional journalists. The work is won a lot of awards. Results are fantastic. They are leaders that are looked to nationally by other journalism organizations. Dee and Andy are so generous with their time and they really care about teaching the next generation of investigative reporters and it's changed my life and I'm just really happy to be a part of it. A typical investigation might take us two to three months. Last year, for example, in our failure at the Fawcett Project where we examined threats to Wisconsin's drinking water, we spent more than $60,000. We do not have a subscription. We have some other forms of revenue but our largest are foundations and individual donations. People who fund our work have no voice in our editorial decisions and we take great pride in protecting the integrity of the journalism. We are looking for things that other people don't want you to know. We investigate for regular people who don't have any way of figuring these things out on their own. We can't ever rest. We have to remain vigilant always to make sure that the public remains knowledgeable about the actions of the people in power. I'm Nernette Bolabash and that was a video produced by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. I find it very impressing and very inspiring and encouraging. Some of you know that I started out my career as a journalist for radio stations and newspapers. I had three wonderful years working with Schwoigen Press back at a very exciting time in the early 90s. I worked with local luminaries like Don Jack's Balloo and Bob Bushner and Joe Gulick and John Hill. Wonderful people and the newsroom was just a beehive of activity and if you follow local journalism you know the Schwoigen Press and other local newspapers around the country are not what they used to be for a variety of reasons and it's kind of sad for those of us who were in the business but fortunately there are organizations like the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. So I'm thrilled that we actually have two members of their staff here all the way from Madison to join us today in Schwoigen. We've got Dee Hall who is a managing editor, a long journalism career. She's a managing editor of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. We also have acclaimed photographer, photojournalist, digital media editor, Coburn Ducart. So thank you so much both of you coming here to join us to talk about your organization which fills the gap for newspapers that no longer can do what they used to do whether they want to or not and they're all changing for a variety of factors but here you are. So when I see a wonderful story printed on the front page of the Schwoigen Press or or Journal Sentinel or any other newspaper it's often done by you right you are providing a free service right and as David Marinus said in the video over 600 news organizations that you are supplying so tell us about your organization first let's start with your background I want to hear how you got into this field I got in from Richard Nixon in 1974 Bernstein and Woodward I mean they were just like the role models for right that's that's sort of exactly my story because you and I are almost the same age so yes I was inspired back and when I was in middle school by the Watergate scandal and the role of the press in uncovering that so I ended up going to journalism school at Indiana University in Bloomington and I worked various internships in St. Petersburg Florida and Louisville Kentucky and Gary Indiana and ended up working for eight years at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix and then but I'm originally from Madison so when my husband and I Andy and he's the co-founder of the Center when we got married and we were expecting our first daughter we want to move closer to family so we ended up relocating to Madison working at the Wisconsin State Journal so great newspaper I was there for 24 years Andy was there for 18 years and then founded the Center so he's he started working at the Center before I did I joined in 2015 but yes it's about 10 years old now okay and we've got Cobra and Ducart and as you're listening to us we're showing some of the wonderful photos that you have taken over the years here you've got an esteemed background at NPR National Geographic several organizations how would you end up in Wisconsin oh that's a great question so I got into journalism because my father is actually it was a tv photojournalist for his whole career in Washington DC which is where I was born and raised so as a child I would go to work with him his car was his office and he had about four police scanners stacked on the dash and about nine antennas all over the car and his trunk was full of photo gear and I just thought that was the coolest so I really looked up to my dad and I enjoyed going on stories with him and then when it came time for me to figure out my career I actually went to UW Madison majored in journalism went to University of Missouri have a master's degree in photojournalism and then when I was looking for my first jobs I naturally looked back to Washington DC which is where I was from my family was there and so I spent the majority of my career working for media in Washington as you mentioned NPR National Geographic I also worked at USA Today in the Washington Post dot com so I really started working in digital media and sort of have followed that path and then when I had my own family like Dee said similar story had some young kids and decided my family had relocated to Wisconsin and I wanted to be closer to them so I found the center and the timing and worked out really well I think for all of us so I started with the center almost three years ago and you work with young interns and you but you still go out in the field yep the photos I'm thinking of are the ones you took from the extraordinary session in December where people were trying to reduce the powers of the new governor and there were these all night legislative sessions very heated very passionate and you were there with the young intern taking photos yep so we're showing some of those today too yeah so and so and we want to make sure people know and we'll keep showing this link WisconsinWatch.org is how they can learn about your organization see some of those photos read some of your stories so describe your organization you are providing investigative stories to local news organizations that don't have those resources tell me more so we when we started out we decided very consciously to make sure that the stories would be distributed for free because one of the problems in journalism is a lack of revenue yeah probably the last thing they're going to do is set aside money to pay somebody else to do stories when they really can't even afford to have their own reporters and so that was very conscious decision so we have a distribution system where the stories go out to every we send a story alert out about four or five days before a story goes out under embargo we let all the editors know it's about to come you can use it here are the photos here are the graphics here's a description of the story our stories if it's multiple stories and then starting this summer the Associated Press began distributing our stories and that's really expanded the audience just Wisconsin so we our stories we we focus on Wisconsin however Wisconsin is actually an interesting state to a lot of the nation sure it's out because our politics are interesting there are a lot of interesting trends that start here or get accelerated here and so we try to put most of our stories if at all possible in a regional national or even global context and so but at the heart of all of our stories is the state of Wisconsin that's our key audience that's our key demographic and you make a point and you say this several times on your website you are nonpartisan you're not advocating any position you are being as objective as we possibly can but as anyone who follows journalism knows that's hard to find I mean people we're all in our own little bubbles right my kids are in their early 20s and they probably get most of their news from Facebook if at all right and that's not necessarily well so Facebook has become a platform that we also use because it's a place where people gather right and they share stories with each other we so now we share our own stories on Facebook and we do it on Twitter and so yeah we I mean social media has become a larger piece of our distribution beyond the direct tie-ins with with local editors we are also putting it out in the social media atmosphere so that people can access our stories from a bunch of different places okay so of all the stories you've been doing all these 10 years what what has been the biggest the most impactful oh well when I started working here d and i started having conversations and this has been a series they've been working on for a number of years which is our failure at the faucet series failure at the faucet failure at the faucet which is examined the drinking water quality of the state including a large list of contaminants that are in drinking water and in different contaminants different parts of the states including lead nitrates bacteria various pathogens strontium atrazine radium the list goes on right so I think it started as a class project yeah d who is also a teacher and so it really it's it's a great package journalistically but also exemplifies how we work with students and really turn them into professional reporters and how the impact of student journalism has really had a national impact and in terms of that story itself or that series of stories we won a national reporting award for that series of stories and what what's most gratifying is we're seeing it now being taken up as an issue by both parties and activists all over the state saying okay we really need to address this problem of drinking water so that's that's the idea we're not telling everyone how it should be addressed or what individuals or officials should do we're just pointing out the problems we're showing you know some potential solutions but ultimately it's up to the the people and the their elected representatives to come up with a solution that works for everybody but we're just gratified to see that people are finally recognizing this is an actual issue in Wisconsin which is a place I think all of us have thought of it's having abundant clean water that's not true everywhere no it sure isn't no it's so wonderful for you to shine a spotlight and so that series is still going on you're still yes yeah we are still doing stories we're not doing as many stories that was a huge effort that we put in that went on for about a year and a half two years with these major looked at major contaminants and tried to drill down very deeply into the impact of each of those contaminants and now we're more covering one of the biggest issues right now is the bacteria bacteria nitrate so we're doing some follow-up stories on that because that's become a huge issue in a lot of parts of the state sure it is and I think one of your recent ones that you're promoting on your website now is this kind of tension between farmers who want to use sustainable energy and promote that and yet others saying no no there isn't the resources for that or you're taking away from yeah this solar thing right it's it is an interesting tension because I think most people support more renewable energy and understand that's better for the environment but what's happening is solar has gone from something that you'd stick on the top of your house or hit a building to this 3,500 acre installation and so the concern there is it's taking over farmland they like this particular land in Iowa County right food or grain you know for animals and you know that's being converted now to or probably will be if the project goes forward to a massive solar installation which again would get Wisconsin farther down the road toward renewable energy because we're we're behind most states when it comes to renewables but it has it comes at a cost it's kind of a local cost for the people who live right there and especially the farmers who live there some of them are benefiting because they're going to lease their land to the project but some of them fear that this will lock up land that they might need for their own future expansion into you know 25 and 50 year leases okay so go to wisconsinwatch.org make sure you you look at that stories and all your other wonderful stories about state government but let's talk about journalism in general your model a non-profit charging no money to newspapers news organizations to run your stories you're able to keep doing it is that the future of journalism our newsrooms in you know downtown sheboygan just never going to come back i don't know the answer to that that question i know that we are a partial answer to the question we're not the whole answer big news organizations like the washington post the new york times pro publica they're still doing well fabulous work and they have resources to do that so but that they're not covering your local town council meeting or city council they you know they're not going to cover the school board and so that that's the gap that and again we're not filling that gap because we are literally a few people based in madison working with students so we we cannot completely fill that gap the gap we fill is for more in-depth stories that often gets set to the side because of the daily pressure of covering the local events and the local politicians and what's happening in their communities and so we're filling the gap in that way but you know in terms of what's going to happen with local newsrooms it's really difficult for me to say you know we've had such consolidation and such you know hollowing out of newsrooms yeah strip mining as you said earlier yeah in some cases you know we were schwoigen press was a family-owned newspaper they sold it for a variety of reasons it's changed hands several times from these national organizations and then investing investment groups come in and just want to reap the profits that they can and shed whatever is not profitable and right gosh you know 120 years ago schwoigen had several daily newspapers a couple of them in german um and then you know then we were glad to have one when i started out in newspapers in shyan we oming we had a morning and an afternoon daily newspaper that's those are just gone right right they are pretty much gone on the one hand it breaks my heart to see that because it was such an incredible environment to work for and we were watchdogs we we covered schwoigen city council plymouth i covered al cart lake village board you know if if there was some scandal or something at least somebody was watching or even just the news of the day i mean you know politicians know when no one's looking and sometimes they behave and sometimes they don't and you know just being present there physically or at least covering a particular area of the state or a particular board or council i mean that puts people on notice that the public is watching that they have somebody in there watching for them or businesses or businesses or whatever i mean i think people are starting to recognize the crucial role that journalism plays in our democracy and that role is being diminished with these financial troubles and so one thing that we do focus on is the issue of democracy we just did a whole series called undemocratic where we looked at some some trends that have been happening on the state level that are really whittling away at the power of regular people individuals to influence public policy in the state like what's an example of that well so redistricting for example so you've got somebody who you know you you because the lines are drawn a certain way your vote really doesn't quote count because you're either packed into a district that's going to go democratic or republican no matter what vote you cast or you're cracked in other words whatever influence your party had in that in that particular area gets diluted to the point where you don't have the influence anymore so it's led to uncompetitive races but it's also led to this you know disparity in the state legislature for example where republicans have two-thirds of the assembly seats and yet they got less than half of the vote exactly so and that's because of the way the that's because of the way the districts have been drawn voter ID for example which you know creates a barrier for certain low income people college students elderly people that is very difficult to overcome so it reduces according to studies it reduces the voter's turnout and you know by something like three percent depending on the study you look at well three percent doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that our state has repeatedly gone to one candidate or the other within that margin very close you know including the most recent election of Donald Trump one by one percentage point or less than one percentage point if three percent of people were dissuaded from coming out or blocked in some fashion well that could have you go that could have made a difference who knows but it's that kind of thing we also looked at the issue of campaign finance you know dark money so people don't really know that there are these sort of hidden influences on their elected officials that come from these groups that give all kinds of money or individuals and we just don't even know who they are or what their agendas are but sometimes we find out that it's not our agenda it's not the public's agenda it's an agenda set by somebody given secret you know campaign contributions you did mention before we started some positive trends in journalism I think you mentioned some newsletters here in the state some individuals taking on their own by their own initiative whether they can make a living at it or not I don't know but tell me about so are you optimistic that we're we're gonna be able to keep shining a light on the things that need that light on them well I do feel optimistic I think one of the things we do is train student journalists and we have a really impressive list of alumni who have gone on to Smithsonian up national news organizations and local news organizations across the country so I do feel very optimistic that those people that we are training or are spreading out across the country and so and carrying our mission along with them and many of them return and we just actually celebrated our 10th year anniversary and many of our interns came back and then also we had them send in video testimonials about what their time at the center meant to them and it was really exciting to see how far they have gone but yes beyond that there are people in our state who are putting out their own newsletters covering news because it's important to them and I don't know that one newsletter here or there will will solve the problem but it is it does show that people are paying attention and realizing that there's a gap that that needs to be covered and if you're just a consumer who just wants objective news that's factual accurate and not going to be pushing some bias on on me where where where do I go well the the big ones like the republicans and the washington post the new york times they're not failing they're doing fine we are part of something called the trust project so and i'll i'll turn this over to coburn because she actually was the one who did all the work for it but the overall idea there is there is a concern about the quality and the reliability of news that's out there you know you've got zillions of websites this is a little stamp of approval and i'll let coburn talk more about it because she actually was instrumental in this right so there was a movement it's part of actually a global consortium of newsrooms to become an approved member of what's called the trust project and we are a member if you go to any of our stories now you will see it's a big t logo trust project and you can click on that for more information but a requirement to become part of the trust project that all these international news organizations have agreed to is a set of standards clearly identifying that you have editorial policies accuracy policies fact-checking policies we have extended bios of all of our reporters on our site saying what their background is what languages they speak um you know a user agreement policy we had we had to really beef up our own internal policies to comply with the trust project one of the reasons we were invited is because we actually already had most of those policies in place we had been very proactive about making sure that we were very transparent to the public about how we work and you know the steps that we take to ensure our accuracy but we were able through the process it took about a year that we went through and I had bi-weekly meetings with a whole group of newsrooms from North America we redid our website but now you know we come we comply and so it also they worked with Facebook and other digital platforms to surface our stories as trustworthy with sort of gets a stamp of approval to sort of identify us as real versus not fake news so it they worked with search engines Google and Bing to surface our stories as news when people start searching so there was a lot of back end coding that went into it we worked with our our website developers so that not only you as a user would see that our site is part of the trust project but on the back end it is being served up you know out of other news so there's an incentive to be a trustworthy news organization right because your stories then will take precedence over the weird website no one's ever heard of that's got some wacky story about a crazy conspiracy theory that is not at all true and somebody was made it up so that that's that's a nice thing yeah and the project is expanding so they're going to keep going and adding more and more news organization so it's not just about us it really is about and we are one of the one of the smaller sites that participated but there were big I mean the Washington Post again is part of the trust project so if you see that little t at the bottom of the story you know it is following standards of accuracy and things that you can find and I know you have a page on your website about that yep so we run out of time but please I urge people to please go to WisconsinWatch.org to find out more about your organization um you can contact your your emails are up there we can find you um so it's really pretty pretty stunning yeah I'm so thrilled that you came here I'm so thrilled you exist because this is this is important work and thank you for coming to Sheboyka and I learned about you from the League of Women Voters you came as a program so please come back and um good and you now now you're cleaning up flooding in your basement but you're in your office in our offices yes but you're overcoming that because journalists can do anything so um thank you so much I so admire your work um thank you all right thank you thanks for having us thanks for joining us on legislative update this is Annette Boulevage please join us next time thank you