Wausau Pilot & Review
Wausau Pilot and Review won four Wisconsin Newspaper Association awards Friday, including a first-place prize for environmental reporting.
Shereen Siewert, founder and editor of the newspaper, won environmental reporting first-place honors for a series of stories on environmental contamination in Riverside Park and on city-owned property at 1300 Cleveland Ave. in Wausau. “The reader of this newspaper should be thankful for the efforts that produced such a comprehensive and important series on a critical issue,” the judges’ comments read.
Siewert also earned a second-place finish in reporting on local government for her work on stories about the north Riverfront development, Wausau Center mall, city spending and zoning issues. Judges said the work “focuses on concise issues and explains details in an easy-to-read and understandable style.”
“Solid, informative coverage of local government,” judges wrote.
Peter Cameron, who is also publisher of The Badger Project, was named a story he produced for Wausau Pilot & Review. His story, How teamwork, ingenuity and legal strategy solved the Brokaw problem, described the way county and local officials dealt with the village’s debt issues after the paper mill closed. The story earned second place in the general news story category.
Siewert’s story that detailed former Weston administrator Daniel Guild’s criminal case in Rhinelander and the chaos surrounding local government there earned a third-place nod. The judges commented that the story was a “great use of open records to dig deeper into the story.”
The awards come one month after Wausau Pilot and Review celebrated its five-year anniversary. The independent, online news organization launched in March 2017.
The winners were announced during the Wisconsin Newspaper Association’s annual convention, which took place this year at the Madison Concourse Hotel. The contest covered work done between September 2020 and August 2021.
