Collaboration is the key.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, WisconsinWatch.org, is a nonprofit and nonpartisan center based in Madison, Wis.

Our mission

The Center works with its partners and mainstream and ethnic news media to improve the quality and expand the amount of investigative journalism in Wisconsin.

Our focus is on government integrity and quality of life issues.

Our mission statement: Protect the vulnerable. Expose wrongdoing. Seek solutions to problems.

The Center is operated by a professional staff under the guidance of a nationally noted board of directors. The Center collaborates with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication, where it is housed; Wisconsin Public Radio; andWisconsin Public Television — and with mainstream and ethnic news media across the nation.

The Center is a founding member of the Investigative News Network, the first network of nonprofit journalism organizations that conduct investigative reporting in the public interest.

The Center is a national leader in promoting journalistic ethics and financial transparency standards.

Since its launch in January 2009, the award-winning Center has distributed more than 65 major reports, including: A multi-part series in Spanish and English on the growing reliance on immigrants by the state’s dairy industry; questions about a high-speed rail line that is Wisconsin’s biggest stimulus project; barriers to treatment for mothers suffering from perinatal depression; the rising numbers of low-income students in Wisconsin schools; the role of DNA testing in proving the innocence of a dozen Wisconsin prisoners; Wisconsin’s troubling increases in suicides; and the underreporting of sexual assaults on Wisconsin campuses.

Many of the Center’s reports are produced in collaboration with other news organizations in Wisconsin and nationwide. The reports have been cited, published or broadcast by more than 150 news organizations including Wisconsin Public Radio, The New York Times, The Capital Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin State Journal, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Oshkosh Northwestern, La Crosse Tribune, Eau Claire Leader Telegram, The Country Today, WBAY-ABC in Green Bay, Hudson Star-Observer, Janesville Gazette, La Comunidad and WisPolitics.com. The Center’s reports have reached an estimated audience of more than 18 million.

The Center is a first-of-its-kind alliance with public broadcasting journalists in six cities around the state, plus students and faculty of the journalism school at Wisconsin’s flagship university.

To fulfill its mission, the Center combines innovative technology with time-tested journalistic techniques to increase the transparency of official actions, intensify the search for solutions to governmental and societal problems, strengthen democracy and raise the quality of investigative journalism.