Wisconsin News Collaborative launches with environmental focus

Three public radio stations in Wisconsin are responding to the system’s loss of federal funding through a collaborative to share reporting on the region’s environment. 

With the Wisconsin News Collaborative, partner stations Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison, WUWM in Milwaukee and WXPR in Rhinelander are sharing coverage for their broadcasts and websites. The idea arose from a meeting among Wisconsin stations last spring where the threat to federal funding was discussed.

WXPR CEO Jessie Dick said she saw an opportunity for collaboration modeled on partnerships in other states.

“We weren’t looking for a temporary fix, because that really wouldn’t do anything,” Dick said. “So it’s kind of a long-term strategy. This could help WXPR, but then the other two stations as well.” 

WPR Director Sarah Ashworth said she had participated in similar partnerships during her time at stations in Vermont and Missouri. “These systems of sharing exist throughout public media, and we thought we should be doing this in service to Wisconsin,” she said. 

Sharing their journalism will help the participating stations make their programming more valuable to their audiences, said WUWM President David Lee.

“[The partnership] responds to rescission in the sense that post-rescission, we have to be better at meeting the needs of our audiences and almost overcommunicating how great we are,” he said.

The collaborative’s focus stemmed from the partners’ participation in last year’s Researching Unmet Needs Study, which found that public radio listeners want more environmental reporting from stations. 

“All of us looked at those results as well and thought, ‘How could we address those needs together?’” said WPR Director Sarah Ashworth. “We can do more together than we could do on our own.”

The partnership soft-launched in November with WUWM carrying a WPR story about chemical runoff from fertilizer in nearby lakes. The newsrooms have since shared additional stories focused on different parts of the state. Lee said he hopes to carry more stories from WXPR in the future as that station prepares to onboard a new environmental reporter.

In January, WXPR was selected as a host newsroom for Report for America. It will onboard a reporter in June who will work with the Mississippi Basin AG & Water desk, a nonprofit journalism collaborative that reports on the Mississippi River watershed. 

“So now this reporter will not only have their work on WXPR, but then be able to share it across the state,” Dick said. 

Dick and Ashworth said the partnership’s true value comes from opening lines of communication among the stations.

“There was a time where … we saw each other as competitors, and that is no longer the case at all,” Ashworth said. “It’s all about what we can build up bigger together.”