Beat reporting is at the core of our work

The foundation of all we do is built on beat reporting. We ask our reporters to become experts about their coverage areas, to build webs of sources so that whenever something important happens, they learn of it immediately, as if they worked in the field.

But unlike someone who works in the field, their job is to work for you, to let you know what’s going on. This is true whether they’re covering education, business, arts, entertainment, local government or the Green Bay Packers.

Take Rick Barrett, who covers two bedrock industries — manufacturing and agriculture. It was Rick who first reported the huge hit America’s Dairyland was taking in a trade dispute with Canada that halted exports of “ultrafiltered milk.”

He found a noble response to the tariff crisis by cheese-makers Jay and John Noble, who re-opened a cheese plant to save four family farms. On Monday, Rick reports how the dairy state has lost 660 herds in the last year and has half the number of just 15 years ago, as families who’ve farmed for generations call it quits.

In other major 2018 business news, no one has come close to covering Foxconn in Wisconsin with the breadth and depth of our reporting team, led by Rick Romell.

The Chinese manufacturing giant stands to receive $4 billion in state taxpayer subsidies in exchange for building its first American display panel factory and creating 13,000 Wisconsin jobs. It’s the largest incentive package offered a foreign company in U.S. history.

Whether it’s a village board redefining farm fields as blighted to make way for a factory or a school board working on a referendum asking for more tax dollars, our reporters represent the public at policy-making meetings.

More often than not, they’re the only citizens present with no vested interest.

For example, Mary Spicuzza was the only reporter at a Nov. 1 meeting when the Milwaukee Common Council advanced a 13.6 percent raise for itself.

Similarly, we let you know when state leaders tried to gut our longstanding public records law just before the Fourth of July in 2015. They had buried the language in a state budget bill, hoping it would pass unnoticed over the holiday. But we found it, told you about it, and you forced them to retreat.

Why would government leaders want to hide public records from the citizens who elected them?

They really don’t like it when our beat reporters inform you how Republican leaders rewrote state mining laws after receiving $700,000 in donations. Or how Democratic leaders gave state tribes what they wanted in permanent gaming compacts after receiving more than $700,000 in donations.

Or how our elected representatives snuck another change into a state budget bill making it easier to condemn our private property to make way for a Canadian oil pipeline company.

That last secret became known thanks to Great Lakes beat writer Dan Egan, who turned years of definitive reporting into the bestselling book “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.”

On Nov. 10, thanks to public knowledge of the problem built by Dan’s reporting, the U.S. Senate approved a measure that would require ocean-going ships to treat ballast water to kill invasive species before entering the Great Lakes. That’s what great beat reporting is all about.

Of course, sometimes our beat reporters just come across a heart-warming story and tell it. Auto racing and sports feature writer Dave Kallmann, for example, wrote a gem this summer about “Dip for Dozer,” a celebration of life in memory of a Cambridge High School football player who died just before his prophecy of a dream season was fulfilled.

Sometimes our beat reporters inform and entertain.

Lead Brewers writer Tom Haudricourt, for example, reached new heights in his long, distinguished career this season. He laid out how the Brewers went from strip-down to playoffs in three years.

He explained Manager Craig Counsell’s creative use of relief pitchers and reminded apoplectic fans on the first October night it didn’t work: “It had been exactly three weeks since the Brewers’ last defeat, so if you want to criticize Counsell for yanking his pitcher too soon, go for it. But consider that your team is 100-68 and playing for a berth in the World Series against the defending NL champs.”

Then there was his descriptive writing, on deadline. Here’s what happened when Dodger Manny Machado, who’d been spiking infielders while running bases, came to bat at Miller Park: “You could step to a microphone in Wisconsin and publicly denounce cheese, brats, beer and Aaron Rodgers, and not hear boos at a level like this. This was epic, deep-throated booing, the kind that Rocky heard at the outset of his boxing match with Ivan Drago in the Soviet Union. Except worse.”

I could go on and on — about our world-class Packers reporting team; our talented Bucks, college, prep and general assignment sports writers; our fine reporters who cover everything from law-and-order to higher education to startup companies; our unparalleled dedication to reporting from Madison and Washington, D.C. But I’m running out of space.

So I’ll wrap up with Meg Jones — a Hodag, poker player, scuba diver, deer hunter, reporter. Meg has made eight trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to write about Wisconsin troops at war. She writes about their transition to peacetime, too, such as the story last week on state officials recruiting veterans to work in Wisconsin.

And who better to write today’s frontpage story about legendary Badger band director Mike Leckrone’s final performance after 50 seasons at Camp Randall than Meg — a former drummer in his band?

We’re not “mainstream media,” we’re Main Street media. We work for no one but you.

Please keep this essential reporting about Wisconsin alive. If you’re not a subscriber yet, consider joining us at jsonline.com/deal.

Thank you.

George Stanley is the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. He can be reached via george.stanley@jrn.com and followed on Twitter @geostanley.