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Outlet profile

Wausau Pilot & Review

U.S. center-left, local independent

Owned byWausau Pilot and Review Corporation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Founded and led by publisher and executive editor Shereen Siewert.
FundingReader donations, foundation grants, display advertising, and paid subscriptions (via a premium app launched November 2025). Does not accept anonymous donations above $1,000 or money from government entities, political parties, or candidates.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The outlet launched in 2017 as a digital nonprofit, taking its name from a defunct print newspaper whose roots trace to the Wisconsin River Pilot, founded in 1865, which merged with the Wausau Review in 1884 and ceased publication in 1940. Shereen Siewert founded the modern version to fill a local news gap in Wausau, Wisconsin (population roughly 39,000 in a metro area of about 150,000). Its first major outside gift — $50,000 from the White Family Foundation — arrived in February 2017. The outlet is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers network, and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. It gained national attention after Cory Tomczyk, later a Wisconsin state senator, filed a $200,000 defamation suit over a 2021 story reporting he used a homophobic slur toward a 13-year-old; lower courts dismissed the suit in 2023 and an appeals court upheld that dismissal in September 2024, with the legal fight costing the outlet roughly $200,000. Although it claims editorial independence and does not endorse candidates, its coverage consistently frames conservative and Trump administration policies as harmful to Wisconsin families — including pieces on tariff impacts on soybean farmers, environmental rollbacks, and data-collection cuts — a pattern that some readers characterize as left-leaning. It reached a self-reported audience of 3.8 million across central Wisconsin in 2025 and publishes content in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Vietnamese.

Sources

  1. Wausau Pilot and Review — Wikipedia
  2. About — Wausau Pilot & Review
  3. Funding Sources — Wausau Pilot & Review
  4. Donor Transparency Policy — Wausau Pilot & Review
  5. Appeals court sides with Wausau news outlet in defamation case — Wisconsin Public Radio
  6. Wausau Pilot & Review reached 3.8 million people in 2025 — Wausau Pilot & Review
  7. Trump's war on measurement — Wausau Pilot & Review

Profile compiled 2026-09-14; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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