Natalie Yahr

Natalie Yahr is a Madison-based reporter for the statewide news nonprofit Wisconsin Watch, where she writes about how Wisconsin’s schools and institutions are preparing people for family-sustaining jobs, and how they could do better. Before that, she covered the Madison-area economy for the Cap Times, where she tracked local union drives, explored why home care workers in Wisconsin make so little, investigated a moving company whose surprise bills sometimes topped $30,000, and profiled more than 60 local entrepreneurs.

Natalie has won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club, the Society for Professional Journalists and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, and she’s published work in Wisconsin Watch, WWNO-FM, Scalawag, Columbia Journalism Review and the New York Times.

Natalie served as a fellow of the Center for Journalism Ethics in 2019, while earning a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she has contributed stories to the center’s website since. Her writing for the Center has explained how journalists can report more ethically on child abuse, crime, mass shootings, police violence and Native American communities. “Why Should I Tell You?,” her 2019 guide to less- extractive reporting, has been read by journalists and added to journalism school curricula across the country.

Before becoming a full-time journalist, she trained as a Spanish-English interpreter and coached adult students working to earn their high school equivalency diplomas. She lives in Madison with her husband, son and two cats.