Special Projects

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 […]

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.

How do dance groups even begin? Sometimes it starts as simply as a group of girls wanting to dance even beyond college. Krush was founded off of a college group, HYPE, when a couple of girls decided they wanted to found their own group just for women. Since then, they’ve endured the pandemic, changes in […]

Tucked away in the heart of the east side of Milwaukee, Carini’s Southern Italian Restaurant is more than just a restaurant. Located on Oakland Avenue near UW-Milwaukee’s campus, it’s a living testament to the power of family, tradition, and passion of a beautiful culture.

A Room of One’s Own, established 1975 in downtown Madison, is Wisconsin’s oldest queer, feminist bookstore and one of only 14 queer bookstores left in America today. Join director Ashley Harrison in an intimate conversation about the store’s past, present, and future with current Room employees Gretchen Treu and Fawzy Taylor.

Comic Books are seen as a fad industry, where sales can be unpredictable. Fallen from their place in the mainstream, comic book stores must adapt in order to survive. In this short documentary, Casmir Byrne shows us how two local shops are dealing with the current scenario.