Dave Umhoefer learned the highs and lows of a newsman as Daily Cardinal city editor in 1982-‘83. It earned him a reporting job at the West Bend News, where he competed with reporters from The Milwaukee Journal, the paper he grew up idolizing as a kid in La Crosse, Wis.

He caught on at The Journal as a part-timer in 1985 and went on to cover local government and politics, lead and later write for the Journal Sentinel’s investigative team, and help establish PolitiFact Wisconsin. He won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting on a pension scandal in Milwaukee County government. His six-part biography of Gov. Scott Walker’s path to power ran in the Journal Sentinel in late 2016.