Press Kit

Media Plan
Current Media Presence and Perception
Since its launch in 2009, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism,
wisconsinwatch.org, has distributed more than 155 reports regarding the economy,
education, environment, government, health and justice system of the state. Many of
these reports have been published, cited or broadcast by over 230 news
organizations ranging from Wisconsin Public Radio to the New York Times.
The work the Center is doing under the title “Water Watch Wisconsin” has been
particularly successful, and in October 2014 achieved a grant of $35,000 from the
Online News Association for “The Confluence: A live news experiment covering
Wisconsin waters.” This project has provided an opportunity for constant
collaboration between the Center and UW-Madison Journalism students.
Since many news outlets lack the resources and/or time to do the in-depth
investigative reporting the Center provides, reporters and editors view the Center
as an invaluable resource and believe the Center plays a crucial watchdog role that
maintains transparency and accountability of the state. Many news organizations
rely on the Center’s findings in the creation of their own stories.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Journalism students and professors also
understand the importance of the Center, as it is an important resource for students
who wish to graduate with the proper skills to become a professional-level
journalist.
While it appears that the citizens of Wisconsin have appreciated the Center
shedding light on government transparency issues, the Confluence project and the
water quality issues that have been uncovered with it have been perceived by some
members of society as exaggerations, or as attacks on certain industry. For example,
when the Center mentioned dairy industry as a probable player in the decreasing
quality and quantity of the state’s groundwater supply, industry stakeholders
claimed it was an attack on economic development. Since dairy farming is the
number one agricultural business in Wisconsin, it is important to realize that a large
number of people with financial interests in the business will likely have negative
perceptions of the Confluence project’s reporting regarding this issue.

Prospective MediaPositioning Statement
To successfully position the Center’s Confluence project as one that doesn’t hinder
economic development, but rather helps to support and in some ways helps to
improve it, the Center must reiterate in the public’s mind the idea that clean water
plays a vital role in the economic prosperity of Wisconsin and its citizens. By
highlighting the importance a clean, plentiful public water supply has on not only
the tourism and recreation industry of Wisconsin but also on the overall quality of
life of Wisconsin’s citizens, the Confluence project’s reporting will have more public
support and a more positive public perception.
The work being done under the Center’s Confluence project should be the “go to”
resource when citizens and reporters alike are looking for information regarding
Wisconsin’s water quality. Fortunately, credibility of the award-winning Center
already exists, but it is possible that some members of the public will view student
journalism as a threat to that credibility. Going forward, the Center must be clear
that their journalism ethics and standards have not in any way, shape, or form, been
diminished through the taking on of this project.
Best Opportunities for 2015 Media Placement
Fortunately, since water quality issues affect everyone that visits and lives in
Wisconsin, the Center has potential of achieving a large audience. Media placement
opportunities for 2015 are listed below by audience type.
Rural Wisconsin residents: These are citizens of Wisconsin who have likely been
affected directly by the water quality issues the Confluence project has been
reporting on. A few have even been used as sources in the Center’s work. However,
many are unaware of the full story, and would greatly benefit from the information
that the Center could provide to them. This is an important audience to capture,
since it is the citizens that drive policy reform. The following placements should
occur in the months leading up to state and local government elections.
Best Opportunities:
 Related local city newspapers, TV and radio outlets
 Outside town hall buildings, other government buildings and/or
institutions
Business owners: Wisconsin’s tourism industry and the related stakeholders rely
heavily on a clean and plentiful water supply. Therefore, this is a captive audience
for the Center’s reporting on water quality issues. Since business is highest in the
warmer months, placements should begin in April or May of 2015.
Best Opportunities:
 State and local newspapers, TV and radio outlets

 Business magazines
Environmentalists: Because of the broad ecological concerns that the Center’s
reporting has brought up regarding Wisconsin’s water quality, environmentalists
nation-wide, and perhaps even world-wide will be interested in the Confluence
project’s reporting. A related field, environmental justice, is also relevant here, and
features an equally large audience for the Center’s work. Just one example of a
strong placement time to capture this audience would be on Earth Day 2015.
Best Opportunities:
 Environmental magazines
 Online forums
Target Media Outlets
Traditional
The Center’s Confluence project should continue to target local and state
newspapers, radio and TV outlets, as well as a select group of regional and national
outlets listed below. These outlets lend good opportunities for placement because
they, like Wisconsin, have large dairy industries.
 California
 New York
 Pennsylvania
 Idaho
Magazines must also be considered as part of the traditional media outlet plan.
Below are important state as well as national magazines that would capture our
listed audiences above.
 Our Wisconsin Magazine
 Wisconsin Natural Resources Magazine
 The Progressive
 The Environmental Magazine
 The Ecologist
Interactive Media
Due to the pervasiveness of Facebook, the Center should continue to maintain its
Facebook page. Even more importantly, however, the Center must continue to put
time and effort into maintaining a quality Twitter feed. Email has been equated to
spam for many journalists, and therefore Twitter has increasingly become a source
for news for many in the media industry.

While the Center has 3 different blogs featured on their website, it appears that
much of the content is just articles from their website. Since the goal of the Center is
to not only inform the public, but also to engage the public, a quality blog that would
maintain communication between citizens and the Center would be the best way to
achieve this. The Center relies on voluntary citizen monitoring on a lot of topics, so
the creation of a blog that would make it easy for citizens to interact and participate
with the Center would be strongly beneficial.
Challenges and Risks
A challenge the Center has faced in the past is the perception that it is a left-leaning,
liberal organization whose work is detrimental for economic growth and
development. Part of this public sentiment has arisen from the fact that the Center
receives about 30 percent of its funding from George Soros funded foundations. It is
important to communicate clearly to the public that the Center discloses all 3 dozen
of its funders in order to maintain the integrity of its reporting.
An additional potential challenge, with regard to the Center’s Confluence project
specifically, is the failure of the reporting passing state boundaries. Since a lot of the
reporting is regarding geographically specific areas, national reporters may not
appreciate the news value of the Confluence project’s reporting.

Who’s Been Watching Wisconsin’s Water?
UW Journalism students and a non-profit combine resources and talent to uncover and
report on Wisconsin’s water quality issues
MADISON, Wis., -- It began at a meeting.
“We all generated lists of ideas, brainstormed, dreamed. Then we got together in an
office and said, “Nope.” “Nope.” “No way,” Executive Director of the Wisconsin
Center for Investigative Journalism (WCIJ) Andy Hall said. “We knew we hit the right
idea when all our eyes grew wide at its mention. It wafted easily over the slain
corpses of weaker ideas littering the floor.”
It has been seven months since the Online News Association awarded a $35,000
joint grant to UW Journalism students and the private non-profit WCIJ to help
support work under “The Confluence: A live news experiment covering Wisconsin
waters.” The project has provided unprecedented collaboration between 7
journalism classes, the WCIJ and 230 Wisconsin news organizations.
“We have often worked in partnerships like these but only on a small scale in
individual courses, powered by a single instructor. This effort is a test of taking that
model across multiple courses, working with multiple partners to the benefit of
many communities,” Hall said. “This project has lead to an expanded relationship
between SJMC and WCIJ — one that has created new opportunities for students to
develop important multimedia projects that are disseminated to a large statewide
audience via WCIJ and its media partners.”
To engage and inform the public on water quality issues stemming from intensive
dairy cow production in Wisconsin, the Confluence project recently begun working
with a local artist to transform their investigative reporting into sculptures. The first
sculpture, “One Day in Brown County,” features the life-size back-end of a dairy cow,
standing up to her hocks in a one day’s amount of manure.
“Working with artist Carrie Roy has really helped to expand our audience,” Hall said.
“Her work is beautiful but at the same time confronts the ugly realities of the meat
and dairy industry.”
Other current stories underway include investigation of hormonal wells found in
Kewaunee county as well as a look into regions in the state where the water is
unsafe to drink.
“I’m really excited at the potential that this project has to unearth some information
that the public will really be interested in knowing,” Hall said. “This project will not
only serve as a wonderful learning experience to the students, but will at the same
time seek solutions to some really big problems.”

Art, Cows and Investigative Reporting
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism explores new audiences for the
state’s water quality issues with the help of local artist
MADISON, Wis., -- As part of the ongoing effort to report on Wisconsin’s water, the
Center’s Confluence project has recently enlisted the help of artist Carrie Roy to
transform big data and statistics into art form.
“I often uncover disturbing statistics that stick with me,” WCIJ Reporter Kate Golden
said. “A reader normally might pass by them in the story in a second. Carrie makes
them into physical objects that a person can touch and linger over.”
Carrie’s first piece, “One Day in Brown County,” features a wooden life-size back-end
of a dairy cow, standing up to her hocks in a one day’s amount of manure. This
stems from the Confluence project’s findings that Brown County has a half a cow for
every acre of cropland—the densest in the state.
To visually portray the statistic that one third of Wisconsin’s wells contain traces of
pesticides, Carrie’s second piece features a faucet laid in walnut, a wood that is
poisonous when cut.
Carrie’s pieces are to be displayed in the Madison area this fall and winter. Next
spring, a time of year when pesticide and manure runoff is at its height, the
Confluence project is taking the art across the state in hopes of sparking public
conservation on Wisconsin’s water quality issues. Each piece will be paired with
digital panels displaying the Confluence project’s reporting that inspired them.
Afterward, the pieces are to be sold at auction.
“We’re so pleased to be able to pay Carrie properly for her work thanks to the
$35,000 grant the Confluence project received from the Online News Association in
October,” WCIJ Executive Director Andy Hall said. “Her work is not only beautiful
but successfully displays the ugly realities of the livestock and agriculture industries
in a way that really sticks with people.”
-30-
About the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
The nonpartisan, nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is
increasing the quality and quantity of investigative reporting in Wisconsin. Its work
fosters an informed citizenry and strengthens democracy. The Online News
Association in October 2014 awarded the Center a joint-grant with UW Journalism
students to help support work under “The Confluence: A live news experiment
covering Wisconsin waters.” The project has provided unprecedented collaboration
between 7 journalism classes, the WCIJ and 230 Wisconsin news organizations.

Don’t Drink the Water!
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s recent research finds hormones in
the groundwater supply of northeast Wisconsin’s karst region
MADISON, Wis., -- As part of the ongoing effort to report on Wisconsin’s water, the
Center’s Confluence project has been investigating the role dairy cow manure has
played in the hormonal contamination of private wells.
“It’s just another reason to worry about Big Dairy’s effects on this vulnerable
landscape,” Lincoln resident Mick Sagrillo, owner of Kewaunee County’s most
estrogenic well, said. Sagrillo stopped drinking his well water over a decade ago
once he learned it tested positive for bacteria and nitrates.
The amount of estrogen a single cow produces in a day is equivalent to the amount
of hormones taken by 1,000 postmenstrual women. In Kewaunee County, where
there are 2 cows for every person, and where groundwater is the main water source
for most people, Sagrillo is not the only one in the area concerned.
Private wells in the karst region are particularly vulnerable to contamination
“because of the many direct routes between the surface and the groundwater,” State
Health Officer and Chief Medical Officer Henry Anderson said. “At some point we
need to have a more intensive look at what kind of intervention needs to happen.”
According to the EPA, numerous studies conducted nationwide have found
hormone-contaminated groundwater near CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding
operations. While there have been conversations about improving such conditions
in northeastern Wisconsin, a 2010 bill that included limiting manure spreading in
the area was opposed by dairy farmers, and failed to make it to the Senate.
“I don’t in any way, shape or form, want to see farming diminish,” Luxemburg
resident Chuck Wagner, who was forced to drill a deeper well this year, said. “I want
to see it flourish. But I want to see it flourish in a way that’s environmentally
responsible.”
-30-

Recent Court Decision Saves Wisconsin’s Economy from
Potential Billions of Dollars in Losses
MADISON, Wis., -- Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey Boldt’s verdict requiring the
state Department of Natural Resources to consider the cumulative impacts of high
capacity wells is projected to improve Wisconsin’s lakefront property values as well
as the state’s tourism economy, which brought $10.6 billion dollars into Wisconsin
in 2013.
This new precedent was one of two stipulations arising from the case in which Boldt
approved the new Richfield Dairy facility in Adams County. Richfield Dairy
commented on the decision, calling the new requirement for cumulative impacts
assessments an attempt to “minimize economic development.”
“It’s unfortunate that some businesses see regulations regarding Wisconsin’s
groundwater supply as an attack of any sort,” Executive Director of the Wisconsin
Center for Investigative Journalism Andy Hall said. “It’s important to look at this
from a holistic perspective. A clean, plentiful water supply is a fundamental element
to Wisconsin’s overall economy, ecology, and therefore, its citizens.”
Wisconsin has over 15,000 lakes, many of which are home to large trophy bass
populations and attractive lakefront properties. The effects of the dwindling
groundwater supply have been particularly devastating for homeowners situated on
lakes such as Long Lake in northern Wisconsin, which dried up completely from an
overabundance of high capacity wells in the area.
“When we moved here, in the first two years, my boys were catching bass like
crazy,” Kenosha resident Brian Wolf said. “It was like catching fish in a barrel as the
water declined.” Brian’s property value has since dropped by 60 percent.
It is estimated that the new cumulative impacts assessments will lead to a decrease
in overpumping across the state, allowing a chance for the area’s natural resources
that attract millions to Wisconsin each year to be replenished.
“Any fifth-grader can tell you that if you put too many straws in the water it’ll be
gone,” said Bob Clarke, a board member of the nonprofit stewardship group, Friends
of the Central Sands. “For our legislators to ignore that is just wrong.”
-30-

(Sample of a strategic LTE)
Every morning, a small part of me believes that when I look out my window, I’ll see
the Little Plover River as plentiful and full of life as it once was years ago. It was in
2005 when I first noticed sections of the six-mile stream, home to a prized trout
fishery and homeowners like me, drying up.
While my heart has ached for the dying stream in my backyard, I felt a surge of hope
and excitement when I heard about the recent court verdict requiring state DNR
officials to now execute cumulative impacts assessments when considering high
capacity well permits.
The issue at hand here is simple: Large, high capacity wells that are characteristic of
many dairy and agricultural farms in the state are quite literally sucking the life out
of the state’s aquatic ecosystems.
Last year, when parts of the Little Plover went below healthy flow levels, the DNR
did nothing. According to law, it is the DNR’s responsibility to supervise and control
the state’s waters to protect public and environmental health. The time is well
overdue that DNR officials uphold this duty, and I am optimistic that this new
accountability standard will force them to do so.
The plight of the Plover River stretches beyond its geographical bounds. It’s small
streams like the Little Plover that make Wisconsin Wisconsin. It’s about time the
state makes a true effort to support them.
-Barb Gifford__Plover

(Sample of a strategic LTE)
The future economic prosperity of Wisconsin is as murky as the waters that support
it. As a local business owner who has seen the steady decline in quality and quantity
of Madison’s lake water, I shake my head in disbelief when older customers come to
the Mariner’s Inn and tell me that when they were children, the lakes were so clear
that they could see to the bottom of Mendota in July.
Now, if you’re lucky, you can just barely see your toes.
Harmful algal blooms, 80 percent of which are caused by phosphorus-rich farm run
off, have wreaked havoc along beaches across the state. Between 2009 and 2013,
the Wisconsin Department of Health Services received 144 complaints related to
human and animal illness associated with the blooms. While most cases involve
gastrointestinal distress or asthma-like symptoms, the blooms were the cause of
two deaths at Spring Harbor in 2002.
In addition to being a health hazard, the algal blooms have proved to be bad for
business. Summer is by far our peak season in terms of revenue, as many come to
Mariner’s to take advantage of our small group charters that depart from the Inn on
Lake Mendota. This past June, our crew was forced to devote 200 more hours than
usual to scrubbing the blue-green slime off of the boats. A few of our charters were
even forced to return early because the smell of dead fish had become too
overwhelming—a common and nasty side effect of the blooms.
Rather than leaving the state’s citizens to tackle the pricey and arduous clean up of
Wisconsin’s beaches, perhaps it is time to tackle phosphorus run-off at its source.
I recently read about an effort to provide economic incentives to farmers who
reduce nutrient pollution upstream of Mendota, called “adaptive management.”
Although it’s in its pilot phase, and experts aren’t sure if it will even work, I have no
choice but to remain hopeful that it will improve the quality of the lake that my
business relies so heavily on.
Simply put, clean water means good business for Wisconsin. Let’s not forget that.
-Bill von Rutenberg__Madison

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