Wausau Pilot & Review
For the second straight year, Wausau Pilot & Review earned a first-place award for environmental reporting from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.
The award is one of three announced Friday for the newspaper and centered on reporting that also earned Wausau Pilot & Review a national award earlier this year.
Shereen Siewert’s series of stories named in the environmental category centered on Wausau’s new drinking water facility upgrade, revealing that city leaders already knew that the city’s water contained toxic chemicals at levels higher than those recommended by government officials when the facility was planned. But the city kept the threat of harm from the public and failed to include technology in the new, taxpayer-funded facility that would remove the chemicals from the water in the future. When PFAS levels went public, the city was forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and other tools to add the technology to the new system, which is not yet online.
Judges called the series an “incredible public service…the kind of information readers deserve to know.”
“Not only does it uncover local government noncompliance but also serves as a primer on PFAS and empowers the public with knowledge about their own water resources and protections,” the judge commented. “The newspaper put significant resources behind covering this complex story, and the payoff is in the service to the local community.”
A story written by freelance reporter Mitchell Skurzewski, now employed at WAOW-TV, took second-place honors in the Sports Feature Story category. ‘Live to fight another day: Stratford native Mason Kauffman overcomes adversity in quest for return trip to NCAA Wrestling Championships’ detailed the “grit, dedication and sheer toughness” of this impressive athlete, judges said.
Siewert also earned a third-place finish in localizing national news for her reporting in ‘Wausau ranks higher in income inequality compared to Wisconsin,’ along with a related story on real estate inflation.
“Great job localizing a critical foundation to the issue of inequality in America: access to economic opportunity,” the judge wrote. “Nice job.”
The awards come as Wausau Pilot and Review celebrated its six-year anniversary. The independent, online news organization launched in March 2017.
The Wisconsin Newspaper Association was established in 1853. Created by and for Wisconsin’s newspapers, WNA exists to strengthen the newspaper industry, enhance public understanding of the role of newspapers, and protect basic freedoms of press, speech and the free flow of information.
