Special Projects

For the last 21 years, Cristina Carlos has lived in Altadena with her family in a small hacienda-style house. The interior was filled with life, with Carlos’s husband, two kids, and all their pets. The home where her kids had their childhoods, filled with family heirlooms that had been passed down over time and irreplaceable […]

Driving through the scorched streets of Altadena, residents look for remnants of homes, businesses, churches – some semblance of what their city once was. Reporters walked the city’s streets with little police presence in their way. In a strip mall on the corner of Mariposa Street and Lake Avenue sits Ms. Dragon Print & Copy, […]

It’s a Wednesday morning in late February, and a light ocean mist rolls over Arizona Avenue in Santa Monica. It’s the city’s weekly downtown farmers’ market, and local vendors have set up booths or tents in the street to sell their fresh produce from all over Southern California. The festivities span almost two bustling city […]

Joe D’Amore’s story begins in Boston’s North End, where his Italian grandmother passed down her beloved recipes just before she died. Her legacy and his grandfather’s experience as a butcher laid the foundation for D’Amore’s culinary journey. After moving to California to pursue acting, he opened his first pizzeria in 1987 in the San Fernando […]

This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into the 2025 California wildfires. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available here. This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic […]

Driving through a fire-torn community that is just at the beginning of its reconstruction is a harrowing sight. All the way down Sunset Blvd. are burned houses, apartments, businesses and gas stations; the list goes on and on. Hiding in the middle of the destruction lies the Palisades Gas N Wash, located at 890 Alma […]

Al conducir por las calles de Pacific Palisades, se ven trabajadores latinos revisando los escombros en busca de algo rescatable. Intentando despejar las propiedades para preparar el proceso de demolición y reconstrucción para sus empleadores, se ve gente trabajando por todo el vecindario. A lo lejos, se escucha el romper de las olas, el silbido […]

Tourism never stops in the City of Angels. Awe-struck travelers pass by Santa Monica Pier, mouths hanging open at the flashing fluorescent lights in the night sky as waves crash by below. The pier sits off of California’s Pacific Coast Highway, a route of legend, pinned between the rolling waves of the Pacific and the […]

Milwaukee’s rich history is a vibrant tapestry of culture, but beneath its beautiful exterior lies a legacy filled with ghost stories, mysterious phenomena, and chilling encounters. This short documentary invites viewers into the city’s shadowy corners, where haunted landmarks and local legends reveal a deeper narrative of the past. Blending witness accounts, local lore, and […]

The night can be such a mysterious place, filled with wonder and beauty, some even find it a more calming time of the day, its quietness, its isolation, many enjoy its embrace. For others, the dark can be a threatening place, a cover for the unknown, a certain pull to gaze into the masses of […]

The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America are fighting to put the city’s energy infrastructure in the hands of the public. Since 2022, they’ve called the campaign Power to the People. Now they are running their first candidate for the city council. It’s a high-stakes race, and it will decide the future of the movement.