In an era of endless social media feeds, push alerts and newsletters competing for your attention, we appreciate the time you spend with our reporting.
We work hard to produce stories with a long shelf life — those with actionable information that make you think for weeks or months after reading them. That’s why we get excited when we learn that particular stories are resonating.
As we look back on 2024, we’re highlighting the stories that seemed to most interest you, at least according to the time readers on average spent on their web pages. If you missed them earlier, perhaps that’s enough endorsement to give them a read.
If you have feedback on our work, we always want to hear it. Let us know how by emailing me at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
The businessman: Pig farm developer gains little trust in Wisconsin town. He doesn’t particularly care.
We published this story at the end of 2023, but folks were reading it well into 2024 and devoting more time on average than they did for any other story this year.
Reporter Bennet Goldstein illustrated how a pig farm developer failed to earn the trust of Trade Lake, Wisconsin, residents as the community learned of their vulnerability to potential environmental harms from agricultural operations. This was part of the three-part series Hogtied, which examined the political, regulatory and economic forces shaping a proposal to build Wisconsin’s largest pig farm.
The Gospel of Matthew Trewhella: How a militant anti-abortion activist is influencing Republican politics
ProPublica Local Reporting Network investigative reporter Phoebe Petrovic told the story of how a Waukesha County anti-abortion extremist went from political pariah to ideological influencer. Matthew Trewhella regained favor among some Republicans by exhorting local government officials to reject state and federal laws that don’t conform with God’s laws based on an obscure 16th-century theory known as “the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.”
In a separate first-person essay Petrovic explained why the story is important, and she later more broadly detailed how the religious right came to influence the 2024 election. That was another story that readers spent more time with compared to most others.
These doctors were censured. Wisconsin’s prisons hired them anyway.
Wisconsin Watch’s Mario Koran, in collaboration with The New York Times, investigated the checkered disciplinary records of Wisconsin prison doctors.
He found that nearly a third of the 60 staff physicians employed over the last decade were censured by a state medical board for an error or breach of ethics. Many doctors went on to face lawsuits from inmates saying that they made errors that led to serious harm, leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts. Many of the physicians would likely struggle to get hired at hospitals and in other settings because of those histories, a former state Medical Examining Board chairman told Koran.
Review of Wisconsin talk radio finds stark divides, misinformation
This was part of a six-part series, Change is on the Air, produced by Wisconsin Watch and investigative journalism students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about the changing state of talk radio in Wisconsin.
In fact-checking six radio hosts across the political spectrum, the students found a disturbing reality that spoke to our current political moment: The shows spreading the most misinformation had the largest audience and most advertising. Readers also spent more time on the page of the series overview story than most other 2024 stories.
‘A shoot can be legal. That doesn’t mean it was necessary.’ Fatal police encounters rise in Wisconsin
In his final story for Wisconsin Watch as a Report for America fellow, Jacob Resneck dug into the disturbing rise in police-involved deaths in Wisconsin over the past two years. The attorney general and the largest police union said the increase was due to more incidents involving armed and dangerous individuals. That’s despite the fact that violent crime is down, and such incidents make up a smaller share of incidents here than in neighboring states. Wisconsin at the time saw more fatal encounters than Illinois, despite having only half the population.
How Milwaukee’s SDC unraveled: weak controls, little oversight
Addie Costello of Wisconsin Watch and WPR traced the backstory of what happened to Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission, which shuttered and laid off its entire staff in April. State and local agencies awarded the intergovernmental commission big contracts even after SDC eliminated internal auditing mechanisms. She found that SDC was created by governments but functioned outside of them. Government officials told her they largely focused on how SDC executes contracts with their individual offices — rather than broader operations issues.
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service reporter Meredith Melland contributed reporting to the investigation. She has closely chronicled other twists and turns at SDC, which provided a range of services such as emergency furnace installation, tax support, career advancement, senior companionship and rent assistance for low-income Milwaukee residents.
How Hmong women in Wisconsin are tackling domestic violence in their communities
Reporter Zhen Wang wrote about a group of Hmong women who are pushing back against attitudes that prevent women from reporting abuse and leaving violent relationships. That includes offering safe housing, counseling and more representation in mediation processes that typically precede a divorce sanctioned by Hmong leaders. The women are also speaking out in an ongoing debate about the role patriarchal attitudes play in shaping scenarios that can prove deadly.
Relatedly, Wang reported on the promise Wisconsin officials see in “housing first” support of domestic violence survivors.
Wisconsin seniors face housing upheaval as assisted living homes reject Medicaid
Assisted living can offer residents more independence and a less institutionalized setting than in traditional nursing homes. But Addie Costello of Wisconsin Watch and WPR found that assisted living residents have fewer protections for residents transitioning to Medicaid. At least four Wisconsin assisted living facilities involuntarily discharged residents who required Medicaid assistance between 2022 and 2023.
Meanwhile, Medicaid reimbursements lag far behind the cost of care, prompting some facilities to refuse to accept anything but private pay.
Poopspotting: How AI and satellites can detect illegal manure spreading in Wisconsin
Reporter Bennet Goldstein last year received a cryptic Excel spreadsheet through a public records request. Although he didn’t understand it at the time, the document contained a list of potential illegal manure spreading incidents that were noticed by satellites orbiting the Earth.
That information led to this engaging story on how Stanford University researchers have used aerial photographs — snapped by satellites — to teach computers to recognize winter spreading. This all matters because applying manure atop snow or frozen soil heightens the risk of runoff, which can contaminate water, spread pathogens, seed algae blooms and kill fish.
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