WCIJ Education Fund launched to support training of investigative journalists

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Today we proudly announce the creation of the WCIJ Education Fund to support the training of investigative journalists.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Seeks to increase the quality and amount of investigative reporting in Wisconsin,
while training the next generation of journalists.

Contribute to the WCIJ Education Fund:

The first goal of the Education Fund is to support WCIJ’s internship program, an integral part of the Center’s award-winning collaboration with the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

As demonstrated by the Legislature’s recent unsuccessful attempt to end the relationship between the Center and the journalism school, our investigative reports have gained the attention of powerful interests. This fund will increase the Center’s ability to fulfill its training mission, while producing high-impact journalism to serve the public interest.

The internship program

Internships for undergraduates, graduate students and recent graduates of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication are central to the mission and operations of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Lukas-intern-at-work — Reporting intern and undergraduate journalism student Lukas Keapproth hunts for photos on a summer 2012 reporting trip about changing demographics in rural Wisconsin. Keapproth landed a job as a staff photographer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette immediately after his internship. Mario Koran/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The Center’s agreement with the UW-Madison requires paid internships and other educational services in exchange for space provided by the journalism school.

More importantly, the Center is committed to raising the standards of journalism, which depends in part on the best possible training for future journalists. And the Center needs the talents and energies of the best students in the journalism school to pursue stories important to Wisconsin residents.

For these reasons, the Center pays all interns and requires that they perform at the level we expect from any paid employee. And the Center devotes the resources necessary — training, purchases of documents and data, payment of travel expenses, supervision, editing, fact-checking, legal services, distribution, marketing, publishing — to ensure that they do so successfully.

Our interns are producing high-impact, award-winning work. They are thriving in professional careers across the country and abroad.

Each internship costs the Center approximately $25,000 a year.

Please give generously to support this work that is critical for our democracy, today and in the next generation!

Contribute online now:

Or mail your contribution to:

WCIJ

5006 Vilas Communication Hall

821 University Ave.

Madison, WI 53706

Questions? Email Executive Director Andy Hall, ahall@wisconsinwatch.org, or call 608-262-3642.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.