matches
Hard to believe but we are launching our second year-end fundraising campaign. Thanks to our loyal readers and friends and family, we did relatively well last year considering that we were still in the depths of a pandemic and had very little experience with fundraising appeals. This year we are setting our sights a bit higher as we have something to sweeten the pot: a donor match!
As new members of the Institute for Nonprofit News, we are eligible to participate in the group’s annual fundraiser, NewsMatch. The group raises money from national and international sources and then distributes the funds among participating news outlets. This year NewsMatch will match dollar for dollar all funds we raise up to $10,000 between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31. But because of the generous support of some community leaders, including Corkey and Betty Custer, Eve Galanter, and Isthmus Community Media board member Masood Akhtar, our match campaign will have the potential to earn at least $35,000.
You might have already received an email about the campaign. We’ll be reaching out to all readers throughout the campaign, which runs through the end of December. We’ll also be mailing appeals to readers who have sent in checks in the past. If you’re a check writer yourself, flip to page 39. We’ve included a coupon in an ad that you can clip and mail with your donation to Isthmus Community Media, Inc., PO Box 1542, Madison WI, 53701.
I hope you will consider taking advantage of this match opportunity to support Isthmus. With the help of readers and some loyal local businesses, we have made great progress since we ventured out on our own last year, successfully transitioning to a nonprofit organization and relaunching in print as a monthly. We have stayed true to our independent roots with our in-depth, explanatory journalism, informed coverage of arts and entertainment, and comprehensive calendar of events. We have also partnered with two nonprofits with a statewide mission — the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and the Wisconsin Humanities’ Love Wisconsin project — expanding our own reach and ability to tell stories of interest to you.
If you need some time to mull a contribution, here’s my suggestion: Grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit down to read Ron Seely’s wonderful essay on our relationship to wolves in this month’s print issue. It is the kind of story you will not see anywhere else. If you want to support more of that type of high-quality local journalism, please do consider making a contribution.
Newsroom distractions
When you’re running a small nonprofit newsroom, you spend a lot of time on things that, unfortunately, don’t have anything to do with producing stories. And I’m not even talking about fundraising.
That’s been very much the case since Isthmus reporter Dylan Brogan and two other local reporters — Chali Pittman from WORT-FM and Lance Veeser of WKOW — were subpoenaed by the Dane County District Attorney’s Office to testify at the trial of Kerida O’Reilly, who was accused of beating state Sen. Tim Carpenter at a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020; the senator had drawn the ire of protesters for recording the activists on his phone.
We committed to fighting the subpoena because, among other things, we thought it was important to preserve the reporters’ independence as news gatherers, which is protected under Wisconsin’s reporter shield law. Unfortunately Dane County Judge Josann Reynolds, in a misguided ruling, refused to quash the subpoenas; she also rejected our move for reconsideration when our attorney argued she had made “manifest errors of law.”
When I wrote about this last month, I noted we considered appealing, but could not afford the fees quoted from our attorney. In another frustrating development, our media liability insurer denied coverage even though we pay for subpoena coverage.
WKOW, however, continued to battle the subpoena issued to Veeser and our former attorney filed a motion in the Court of Appeals to stay his subpoena — reporters Brogan and Pittman were not included in the motion.
In response to that, at a hearing on Oct. 15, Reynolds asked Assistant District Attorney Paul Humphrey whether he could proceed without Veeser’s testimony. Humphrey, who had argued in an early brief that “each of these [reporter] witnesses provides important testimony about their observations about the crime,” reversed course and said he could. Reynolds subsequently quashed the Veeser subpoena and began jury selection for the trial that afternoon.
In the too little too late category, we had just that morning spoken with attorney Andrew Erlandson from the Hurley Burish firm, who offered to help us pro bono. He appeared on Isthmus’ and WORT’s behalf that afternoon in the courtroom requesting that Brogan and Pittman be allowed to join Veeser’s motion to stay. Once that motion became moot, Erlandson spent the rest of the afternoon preparing an appeal on behalf of Brogan and Pittman; he got it in shortly after 5 p.m. Unfortunately, the court denied our request for relief over the weekend and Brogan and Pittman took the stand on Monday.
I watched the entire two-day trial, wanting to know what questions Humphrey would ask Pittman and Brogan and how their testimony would be used in the proceedings. O’Reilly had steadfastly maintained that she never hit Carpenter and both Pittman and Brogan had told Humphrey that they were not able to identify who had battered Carpenter that night — how could the reporters’ testimony possibly help the prosecution, I wondered?
It didn’t, it turns out. In fact, it might have hurt in at least one instance, where testimony by Brogan contradicted the memory of Carpenter, calling into question the reliability of the prosecution’s main witness — Carpenter himself.
O’Reilly was subsequently found not guilty on all charges.
At the trial, O’Reilly testified that she and other activists feared they would be harassed or targeted if recordings or images from the protests circulated on social media. Those concerns are understandable but in conflict with a democracy and a free press. It was absolutely wrong that Carpenter was physically assaulted for trying to record at the protest and I am sorry for his physical and emotional wounds resulting from the altercation.
It’s regrettable that the prosecution failed to find the people who actually battered Carpenter, and that the state’s reporter shield law was trampled in the process. It’s also unfortunate that the ability to afford legal representation likely determined the different outcomes for the three journalists impacted by the subpoenas.
My hope is that next time a local journalist faces a subpoena that we in the greater journalism community are all better prepared and ready to offer support.
