Madeline Heim gets enthused talking about wetlands or watersheds. Her voice picks up a tone of wonder at the mention of “dark skies.” And it carries a bit of an edge on the subject of climate change.
That’s the best kind of reporter — someone who doesn’t just “do” a beat, but “speaks” it, and it’s why Heim is so good at reporting on the environment, and specifically the Mississippi River basin.
Born in Menomonee Falls, educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Heim has a deep appreciation for the state, its resources, and the people who live here.
Before joining the Journal Sentinel, she covered education at the Winona Daily News, and health and science at the Appleton Post-Crescent. The latter job involved covering the mushrooming COVID pandemic, where she became something of a legend among Gannett Wisconsin editors for the quality and quantity of her work.
Since joining the Journal Sentinel, she has contined to bring an authoritative voice to her work. And speaking of voices, she is called upon with some regularity to speak on the environment in public, a task at which she excels.
This week, she joins colleague Caitlin Looby in looking at the astonishing impact climate change had on weather in 2024, breaking one record after another.
Get to know Journal Sentinel reporter Madeline Heim:
What drew you to journalism?
I’ve loved stories and writing since I was a little kid, and back then, I had aspirations of becoming a bestselling author. When I eventually realized that career path is pretty rare, I asked my high school English teacher what else I could do with a flair for the written word, and she suggested journalism.
My first reporting experience didn’t come until my freshman year of college, working for the Daily Cardinal at UW-Madison. I covered student government meetings every week and conducted all my interviews in the hallway outside our office because I was too nervous to do them in front of my fellow staff members.
I liked what I did, but I really fell in love with journalism during a summer internship for what’s now the Suburban team of the Journal Sentinel. My editors pushed me out of my comfort zone every day of those three months, assigning me to breaking news, courthouse coverage and even food reviews at the county fair. Near the end, I wrote what would turn out to be an award-winning series about what it’s like to experience homelessness in one of Wisconsin’s richest counties.
It was never about the award, of course. I found that I had unlocked a deep motivation to make my sources feel seen in my work — and more than that, my passion for reporting stories that challenge readers’ perspectives, humanize their neighbors and teach them something along the way. That’s at the heart of how I approach journalism today.
You covered the COVID-19 pandemic. What was that like?
Before I came to the Journal Sentinel, I wrote about health and science for the Appleton Post-Crescent and the USA TODAY Network in Wisconsin. In early March 2020, I was wrapping up a journalism conference in Washington, D.C., when my editor called me and said we needed to have a serious conversation when I got home about how we would cover coronavirus. He seemed to see the writing on the wall about what lay ahead, and sadly, he was right.
Leading coverage of the pandemic for our network was exhausting and, at times, devastating. Early on, I attempted to make sense for readers of what we knew about COVID-19 (very little). I felt a glimmer of hope reporting on the first vaccines to come to the Fox Valley, and fielded hundreds of calls from people who were confused about their rollout. My hope dulled with the onset of the delta and omicron variants, when I wrote about hospitals so full they were transferring patients for care; the slow discovery of “long COVID”: and the taxing mental toll the situation was taking on health care workers, many of whom told me they never would have signed up to witness so much dying.
Some days I felt like I was drowning in death numbers and reports of dwindling hospital beds, and the stories I wrote made me go to bed crying. On better days, I felt like I was making a difference — like when I reported tips about making it through a socially distanced winter from a scientist based at the South Pole, or profiled the first person to die of COVID in Outagamie County, a story his family said brought them peace.
Above all, I sought to demonstrate every day that all the numbers that told the story of the pandemic weren’t just numbers. They were people.
Why did you make the switch to covering environmental news?
After covering the pandemic’s onslaught of breaking news for more than two years, I needed a change. I had dabbled in environmental reporting at the Post-Crescent, but when I saw the Journal Sentinel was hiring a reporter to cover western Wisconsin and the Mississippi River basin, I jumped at it.
If you’ve read any of my previous columns, you know about my obsession with the river. (Nowadays, I get texts from friends anytime they cross it, if that tells you anything.) It has been my great honor to inform Journal Sentinel readers about the challenges it’s facing — like dying floodplain forests, excessive flooding that’s eroding sacred Indigenous mounds, and how climate change is affecting wildlife habitat and river traditions.
My love for people-centric stories at first made the shift to writing about the environment seem daunting. But I soon realized that my favorite types of stories on this beat have been about people who love the environment, and why — like a commercial fisherman who knows the Mississippi like the back of his hand, a man who collects thousands of acorns a year to replenish forests or a sweet musical group that writes meaningful river tunes.
Next year, I hope to continue this work and marry it with my prior beat, putting a spotlight on the growing ways the environment affects our health. If you’ve got a story you think should be written, I want to hear from you.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
Especially as an environmental journalist, I find so much joy in getting out in the field and hearing people talk about their favorite wild places and things.
Last summer, I stood calf-deep in the Chippewa River watching researchers carefully transfer endangered freshwater mussels to the river bottom in hopes they’d thrive there. I’d never thought much about mussels before, but the excitement that day was infectious.
My job doesn’t always have me on fun field trips, of course, but there are tons of little moments like this. I do my best to soak it all in.
What are your interests outside of work?
When I’m not reporting or writing, I’m chipping away at a lengthy to-be-read pile of fiction and nonfiction, going to yoga and dance classes, exploring new state parks and cuddling with my sassy cat, Annie.
I also volunteer at Simpson Street Free Press, a Madison-based literacy and writing organization where kids get to see their stories published in a newspaper. Every week, these students challenge me, make me laugh, keep me up-to-date on the latest lingo and remind me that what I get to do is a dream come true.
Madeline Heim is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about environmental issues in the Mississippi River watershed and across Wisconsin. Contact her at 920-996-7266 or mheim@gannett.com.
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