WYOFILE

WyoFile creates a more informed and engaged citizenry in Wyoming by producing fact-based, in-depth journalism; by building relationships with its audience; and by promoting civil discourse around the issues that matter to Wyoming. WyoFile aims to recenter and relocalize the conversation in and about Wyoming and in doing so insulate Wyoming from the impacts of oversimplified nationalized rhetoric, fake news and propaganda.
When WyoFile succeeds, more Wyoming citizens communicate their expectations to their elected officials; more hold those officials accountable when expectations are unmet; more run for office and volunteer for community boards; more attend school board meetings, Game and Fish open houses and Parks & Rec roundtable discussions; more submit comments to federal land management planning processes; more participate in economic development and policy reform collaboration. And everyone so engaged does so with full and ready access to the relevant facts, objective analysis and context they need to be effective and to make informed decisions.

WyoFile's solution has two primary elements.
The first is to produce uncompromising, in-depth, fact-based reporting about the people, places and policies of Wyoming. WyoFile will examine and challenge the decisions made and actions taken by those in power. It will explore the circumstances, connections, and incentives that influence those decisions and actions. It will continue to investigate corruption, self-interest and insider dealing. WyoFile will expand the quality and volume of information available about the key issues facing Wyoming — transparency, environment and natural resources, energy, social justice, economic diversification, political homogeneity, criminal justice and others. WyoFile will counter misinformation and lies.
The second element of WyoFile's solution is to proactively connect Wyoming's residents and others with its reporting. This is more than simply getting the content in front of eyeballs. It's building relationships. WyoFile will become a regular and relied-upon aspect of readers' daily lives, and in doing so establish the type of trust and credibility once enjoyed by the daily newspaper and monthly general interest magazines. In a landscape that's saturated with information — some of it worthwhile, some of it nefarious — relationships and credibility are more important and harder to come by than ever. WyoFile must and will focus on building community with our audience.
To accomplish this, staff will adapt WyoFile's content — not the core of it, i.e. in-depth, uncompromising journalism, but the forms in which it is presented — to better fit the way people find, consume, distribute and engage with information today. WyoFile will evolve its cadence, timing and methods of distribution to expand reach and maintain regular and more frequent contact. Staff will build multi-platform opportunities for engagement around their reporting. They will redefine “audience" to include not just the people who receive WyoFile's e-mail newsletter and/or navigate to WyoFile.com to read articles but also the broader community that read WyoFile's work in partners' magazines and newspapers, listen to its discussions on the radio, access WyoFile content via other websites, and engage with WyoFile on social media platforms.

WyoFile's aim is to change the conversation in and about Wyoming, to literally affect what people are talking about — in the office, at the bar, around the dinner table and online — when they discuss the status, policies, politics, economics, resources and future direction of Wyoming. WyoFile will relocalize Wyoming's civil discourse and reground it in the facts that daily impact Wyoming and Wyoming lives, reclaiming the conversation from the oversimplified national and international sloganeering that has come to dominate. WyoFile focuses its coverage on several key areas: government transparency, corruption, policy, politics, environment, natural resources, energy, economy, art, culture, Native America and the outdoors. WyoFile's commentary encourages substantive dialog at a time when the polarized national political discourse is reaching into Wyoming's civic life.

WyoFile upholds high professional standards by hiring experienced journalists and training promising new ones, providing fair compensation, and fostering career growth.

WyoFile is an innovator in the field of journalism, and an incubator for new approaches. It adapts its content and its delivery methods to meet the evolving expectations of digital media consumers, and to leverage the opportunities presented by new technologies and the rapidly shifting media landscape.

In May, the Society of Professional Journalists honored three WyoFile reporters with “Top of The Rockies" awards for their work in WyoFile — Andrew Graham and Dustin Bleizeffer for a series on coal-industry layoffs in Gillette, and reporter Angus Thuermer for a story about the death of Jackson alpinist Kim Schmitz.

In July, The Nieman Lab, an arm of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, profiled WyoFile in its newsletter as an exemplar of how in-depth journalism can thrive in rural communities.

WyoFile reporting prompted the removal of a billionaire's cabin from a conservation easement in the Path of the Pronghorn.

A WyoFile expose' on disparities between lottery revenues delivered to the state, and those promised by the lottery corporation while lobbying for the game's creation prompted the Wyoming County Commissioners Association to consider drafting legislation that would limit lottery “expenses" including executive compensation.

An investigation of the opaque political dealings that killed a popular criminal justice reform bill earned a large and appreciative national audience after being picked-up by The Marshall Project. One reader in Alexandria, VA described the works as “one of the best articles I've ever read about Wyoming politics." Another, in Wyoming, as “a great example of in-depth journalism at its best," and “a great case study in the curriculum of a course in civics or political science or journalism." Reporter Andrew Graham has, in fact, since discussed the investigation with university students and faculty.

Wyofile's dogged pursuit of transparency in state government elicited a direct response from Rep. Albert Sommers at an interim committee meeting on school finance reform: “I don't want this perceived by the public that we're sneaking around behind closed doors making decisions." Much like the reintroduction of wolves has affected elk behavior, the presence of the Wyofile journalist is impacting the way public business is conducted.