Welcome to Wisconsin Watch’s Year in Review series. In this series, we’re looking back on Wisconsin Watch’s reporting and impact in 2023.
Throughout the week, you’ll be hearing directly from reporters and editors and get exclusive behind-the-scenes looks at our biggest investigations of the year, along with some sneak peeks at what we have planned for next year.
Here’s one reason I love working for Wisconsin Watch: As a mission-driven newsroom, we don’t chase clicks. We measure our success in impact.
That means exploring solutions to challenges Wisconsinites face. While some problems might seem intractable, I can’t help but feel energized while looking back at what our reporting delivered this year.
Zhen Wang’s investigation into whether Milwaukee Tool relied on forced Chinese prison labor to make work gloves prompted a bipartisan congressional investigation into the company’s supply chain practices.
Phoebe Petrovic’s collaboration with The Sheboygan Press exposed a sprawling sexual harassment scandal within the Sheboygan Police Department. The stories spurred the resignation of one officer and vows by city officials to better respond to and prevent such misconduct.
After Petrovic reported on how Wisconsin law allows private voucher schools to discriminate against students who need disability accommodations, Democratic lawmakers proposed legislation to prohibit such practices.
Mario Koran’s reporting for The New York Times in collaboration with Wisconsin Watch exposed months-long lockdowns and deteriorating conditions within Wisconsin prisons. His stories helped spur legislation to address the conditions and promises from Gov. Tony Evers to ease the lockdowns.
Milwaukee Public Schools halted its affiliation with the Milwaukee Education Partnership after WPR, in collaboration with Wisconsin Watch, examined questions about whether the partnership delivered on its promises while collecting more than $1 million in district funds over a decade.
These are just a few of many examples of our reporting’s impact in 2023. None of this could have happened without your support.
Bring on 2024.
— Jim Malewitz
In the year 2023, I’ve been tirelessly working on stories where the subjects’ human rights have been violated both in China and the United States.
The first story was digging into a renowned American brand’s alleged use of forced prison labor in China. I started with a month-long investigation to find out: Is the allegation of forced prison labor true?
I talked to a renowned human rights activist who said the types of work gloves and the name of the supplier are etched in his mind during his nearly five years of imprisonment in China. I also talked to a second source. The two former inmates made Milwaukee Tool-branded gloves. Both said inmates were subjected to discipline, including beatings and banning family visitations when they failed to get the work done on time.
Milwaukee Tool declined to answer detailed questions, saying it had investigated the claim but providing no evidence of what it investigated or found. The company issued blanket denials to our questions.
I presented the two former prisoners’ accounts to more than a dozen supply chain experts, human rights lawyers, union leaders, and people with insight into the brand in Wisconsin and beyond. All said Milwaukee Tool could be violating U.S. law by selling gloves made with forced prison labor.
My reporting showed that such questionable behavior is rarely uncovered by the self-regulating system currently in place. I also learned that supply chains at companies like Milwaukee Tool with thousands of contractors and subcontractors and sub-subcontractors — many of them overseas — are very difficult for reporters and auditors to investigate.
As of today, Milwaukee Tool still has no specific response to our investigation into allegations that some of their work gloves are produced by the sweat of prisoners forced to toil 12 to 13 hours a day for pennies per day.
But others have acted based on Wisconsin Watch’s reporting. A bipartisan congressional committee is investigating Milwaukee Tool’s supply chain to determine whether any federal laws are being broken.
I’m continuing to look into allegations of the violation of human rights — individuals who have lost rights and are subject to the Wisconsin guardianship system.
— Zhen Wang
The letters written by people behind bars became impossible to ignore.
It was June, and the first week of a one-year fellowship with The New York Times, part of a new Times initiative to support investigative journalism by collaborating with local newsrooms like Wisconsin Watch.
That week we planned to start work on a project examining the Department of Corrections, one that would take several months to complete. But a separate story would pull us in another direction.
By then, men housed at Waupun Correctional Institution had already spent three months locked down, many of them confined to their cells 24 hours a day. Letters describing inhumane conditions at the state’s oldest prison began to pile up. Those incarcerated detailed weeks spent without fresh air or exercise; access to medical care so limited men hurt themselves, or threatened to, just to be seen by a nurse. Editors and I set the first story aside for the moment – we needed to understand what was happening now.
At the time, the DOC acknowledged the lockdown — calling it “modified movement” — but was unclear about the reasons for it. DOC attributed the measures to prisoners who threatened or assaulted staff or other prisoners. They insisted the lockdowns weren’t caused by a severe staffing shortage, even as more than half the positions for correctional officers and sergeants stood unfilled.
We suspected otherwise. I reached out to correctional officers, retired wardens, state lawmakers, union representatives, local politicians — anyone who might hold a piece of the puzzle. After nearly two months of reporting, we finally knew enough to report a fuller picture: Lockdowns, once a rare measure implemented in an emergency, were now used to deal with chronic staffing shortages.
In the weeks and months that followed publication, media across the world picked up the story. Advocates formed vigil groups, putting pressure on lawmakers to propose bills to address the problems. In November, Gov. Tony Evers and the DOC Secretary Kevin Carr released a statement that not only acknowledged that short-staffing was behind the lockdowns, but included a plan for how to address it.
At Wisconsin Watch, we believe delivering journalism with true impact means that reporters are unwilling to accept responses from powerful agencies at face value. It means uncomfortable telephone calls, hours in the car traveling to meet sources and afternoons spent knocking on doors, until we know enough to bring you the facts with confidence and authority. And it all takes time, resources and patience.
As the year closes, we know a great deal more about the problems that plague the state’s prison system. But the lockdowns continue; in Waupun, the restrictions are now in their 10th month. There are many more questions waiting to be answered.
We hope to continue reporting on our state’s correctional system long into the future, and we ask for your support to keep it going. Let’s continue breaking new ground in 2024. We’re just getting started. Thank you for being our readers. You keep us going, in more ways than one.
— Mario Koran
It was my first time experiencing weather below 40 degrees, let alone stepping in snow, as I accompanied ambassadors from BLOC (Black Leaders Organizing for Communities) as they conducted door-to-door outreach on Milwaukee’s North Side.
“What does your community need to thrive?” the ambassadors asked those who opened their doors.
At one point, the ambassadors had a question for me: Why did I want to shadow them for a day?
It would help me understand what everyday people thought was important — and wanted to see in news coverage, I answered.
I had just moved to Milwaukee from Arizona and was beginning my year-long fellowship as a Roy W. Howard Investigative Fellow for Wisconsin Watch, reporting for our News414 service journalism collaboration. My task was to learn as much as possible about Milwaukee’s central city — identifying and filling accountability gaps.
The city is filled with people who look like me, with first and last names resembling mine. But that didn’t mean I automatically gained their trust. I heard questions like: “You’re not from Milwaukee, are you?” Or “How much did you know about Milwaukee before moving here?”
Nevertheless, I strove to amplify their perspectives, identify systemic problems and hold leaders in Milwaukee accountable. Part of the battle included getting Wisconsinites to answer a phone call from my Las Vegas number.
When I succeeded, I reported on how Milwaukee’s I-94 expansion would affect residents who live directly by the freeway, efforts by two Municipal Court judges to cancel the contract of a nonprofit that provides jail alternatives, Milwaukee Public Schools’ busing woes and the learning challenges students face in unairconditioned school buildings.
Most people never interact with journalists, especially Black and brown residents. So I aimed to feature at least one person who had never been interviewed. But here in Milwaukee, I learned that even some public officials rarely spoke to reporters.
“I don’t get too many interviews, I’ll be honest with you,” one director of the state’s largest school board told me as we discussed the state of local journalism — a conversation I had with several sources.
With fewer local journalists these days, Milwaukee and other communities have only more need for watchdog reporting.
— Jonmaesha Beltran
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