The top Wausonian stories of 2025
Well, it was quite a 2025! To recap, I left my role at City Pages at the end of February to focus on The Wausonian full time. It’s been rewarding, and challenging, and the growth I’ve seen over this year has affirmed what I believe - that if you focus on digging out quality local stories, people will support it.
It’s become a bit of an annual tradition to look back on my top stories of the year based on Substack’s “Most Popular” feature. But I will be honest: I have no idea how Substack calculates this and I haven’t been able to find any explanation. It’s not pure views - because I checked one day and stories with higher views were further down the list than stories with fewer views. It’s not subscribers gained - my follow-up story on the embezzlement of funds from two area non-profits isn’t in my top five despite ranking high on both of these metrics.
That said, my top story ever is my Weekly Wausonian that led off with a short piece about the gutting of Channel 9’s reporters. It ranked very high in both views and subscribers.
And that’s another interesting element - the vast majority of my top stories are paywalled. The paywall doesn’t stop people from sharing them.
Anyway the list of stories below comprise the top stories from 2025.
Top Wausonian stories of 2025
Bull Falls has a new owner: This is a scoop. The Wausonian was the first to report that a new owner had purchased Bull Falls Brewery, now called Bull Falls Brewing Co. We then wrote a business story on the new version opening up; and this fall they opened the newly remodeled inside, which is now quite a bit more spacious than the previous version.
The rise and fall of Rockwater Cafe: When I learned that Wausau native Marcus Nelson was back in town, I put sitting down with him to talk about the old Rockwater Cafe on my list. It turned out that chapter, which I was involved in as someone who played in bands in my teens and early 20s, was a small sliver of the scope of Nelson’s crazy life that took him to Silicon Valley, to J Crew modeling and much more. We had a long and meandering interview, and I decided part I would be the Rise and fall of Rockwater Cafe; part II, which is everything that happened afterward, is something I haven’t yet published.
The middle is getting expensive: For those who have read The Wausonian for some time, you know I have an obsession with real estate and rental prices. Wausau is a weird real estate market, in that unlike larger cities, it’s often cheaper to buy instead of own. My own situation, for instance, is absurd compared to what renters pay now. This story landed because it centered on Lokre turning an office building into apartments. They were aimed at the “middle” range of rent - and that “middle” is still quite expensive. I meant this to be a quick story and it turned into yet another deep dive.
Wausau’s Community Paramedic Program is even more impressive up close: Technology allows reporters to do things from their desks that we could only have dreamed of when I first got into the business. But that said, there is something still to the notion of going and seeing something for yourself. So I set up this ridealong with Matt Kozloski, Wausau’s Community Paramedic. It took a couple of months to get all the legal approvals, but we did it. And seeing was believing: the program is saving money and doing good in the world by reducing the need for emergency ambulance by so-called “frequent flyers,” people who were relying on 911 to fill a gap in medical need.
Marathon County is looking to hire its own homeless coordinator: I didn’t expect this one to make the top five list. But it does have something a number of the other stories have: The Wausonian reported it first. The county in its budget reclassified a nursing position to create a homeless coordinator position. What that person will do and how it will fit into the broader framework of people in the area who deal with homelessness issues is yet to be made clear.
Stories I think should have done better
I’m glad these stories resonated with folks. But there are some that I am genuinely surprised didn’t make the list.
We might never know how much was embezzled from the Blessings in a Backpack: Once again, The Wausonian broke news that there was an investigation into the finances of Blessings in a Backpack. Oddly, only one other outlet wrote briefly on it, which is odd since the embezzlement was hinted at in a press release. In a follow-up, The Wausonian obtained the final police report and learned that money was also embezzled from MC United Soccer Club. That’s a pretty big deal, and we needed to handle it with care given the circumstances (you’ll see if you read the story), but it’s shocking to me that other media outlets didn’t cover such an important story.
UWSP-Wausau is leaving its nearly empty campus: It was shocking to me to learn a year ago that UWSP-Wausau was only using 21% of its campus. It shocked me further to learn that UWSP decided to move UWSP-Wausau to NTC in fall of 2026. And even more so when I saw the headlines borrowing the masked framing of UWSP and NTC “partnering.” Sure, it’s technically true, but obviously the story is the giant UWSP-Wausau campus is going to be completely empty in short order. And that’s after several entities leased space there. The county will be sending out a request for proposals for the campus, looking specifically for proposals that will use entire buildings at least. And there will be an open house for proposers.
How an alert firefighter led to the charging of a Wausau Fire division chief over alleged drug theft and misconduct: Lack of brevity in the headline aside, the story of how a firefighter noticed something wasn’t right on his shift and started paying attention led to according to his and then other firefighter’s sleuthing, that a division chief was allegedly stealing drugs and using them in the department bathroom. It took some gumption and led to an arrest before things could get worse.
Top Wausau story arc
Lastly, I would like to finish with the top story arc of 2025. And that would be the Doug Diny/ballot box ethics case. It started in January when a group of residents filed an ethics complaint against Mayor Doug Diny for removing a ballot box from the steps of city hall in fall of 2024. (Yet another story The Wausonian broke.) The ethics board took up the case in February and a decision finally came down in October. Ultimately the board found that Diny did violate city ethics codes and issued a report to that effect. Meanwhile, the state investigation of the matter still remains a mystery, more than a year after it began.
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