Title: Content Director
Contact: 605-937-9398 / bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org
Language spoken: English
Demographic expertise: South Dakota, including the Rapid City area, the Black Hills, rural towns and reservations
Topic expertise: agriculture, state government, education, rural issues, Indigenous people, poverty
Potential conflict of interest: Pfankuch serves on the board of the Oyate Prevention Coalition in Rapid City, which works to prevent substance abuse among Native American youth. He will recuse himself from reporting on the organization.
Biography: Pfankuch (pronounced FAN-cook) is Wisconsin native and former editor of the Rapid City Journal. He has worked for more than 30 years as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Wisconsin, Florida and South Dakota, including as reporter or editor at the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram and Capital Times in Wisconsin, and at the Florida Times-Union and Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida. He also is a syndicated writing coach who has presented at newspaper conferences across the country. Pfankuch has won more than four dozen state, regional and national journalism awards, including, while at News Watch, agricultural writer of the year from the North American Agricultural Journalists association in 2020, 2021 and 2023 as well as first-place reporting awards in the Great Plains Journalism Awards sponsored by the Tulsa Press Club and South Dakota NewsMedia Association. Pfankuch lives in Black Hawk.
Professional memberships: Investigative Reporters and Editors, North American Agricultural Journalists, South Dakota NewsMedia First Amendment Committee
Social platforms: X/Twitter; LinkedIn
Archive of work: South Dakota News Watch
Bart Pfankuch
Total 337 Posts
Legislation seeks to clarify who decides what happens to the dead in South Dakota
South Dakota has some of the weakest laws in the nation when it comes to regulating who decides what should happen to the body of someone who dies, and the vague laws are causing greater expense for survivors, creating emotional trauma for grieving families and funeral directors, and occasionally leading
South Dakota tribal college part of NASA plan to build housing for use on the moon and Mars
Sinte Gleska University, a tribal college in Mission, S.D., may soon enter into a partnership with NASA that would result in new science education programs, more affordable housing for state reservations and the development of 3D housing that could someday be used on the moon or Mars.
The National
Improving education top goal of Native American agenda in 2022 South Dakota legislative session
One way to understand which issues are most important to the South Dakota Native American community — the state’s largest minority group — is to examine the bills that are filed each legislative session by the handful of Native lawmakers serving in statewide office.
This year, about three dozen bills were
Bills would allow South Dakota Native Americans to hunt, fish and visit state parks for free
Native Americans from South Dakota would be able to hunt or fish anywhere in the state for free and visit or camp in state parks without paying fees under two bills under consideration by the state Legislature.
House Bill 1141 would allow enrolled members of a federally recognized Indian tribe
Shortage of classroom substitutes makes teaching and learning more difficult in SD
A shortage of substitutes to fill in for full-time teachers is forcing school districts in South Dakota and across the country to take sometimes drastic measures to keep classrooms staffed, and concerns are rising that the quality of student education may diminish as a result.
Many full-time teachers are losing
Child hospitalizations, Long-COVID concerns rise amid omicron surge in South Dakota
As COVID-19 infections sweep across South Dakota in record numbers, concerns are rising that children and adolescents are suffering more severe illness than before and may be susceptible to symptoms that can afflict them long into their lifetimes.
A growing body of medical research and reports from pediatricians in South
South Dakota returns millions in unused housing assistance funds to federal government
South Dakota has sent millions of dollars of unused COVID-19 housing assistance funds — allocated to help low-income renters — back to the federal government, mainly because not enough people applied for help.
As of early January 2022, the state had received about $271 million in federal funding to pay rent and