Title: investigative reporter and 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 308 Posts
Poll part 2: SD women express support but also criticism of Gov. Kristi Noem
A new statewide poll shows that women are less supportive than men when it comes to almost every aspect of the performance of Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican who is the state’s first female governor.
The poll of 600 residents was conducted from Oct. 22-28 and sponsored by South
SD election officials take new approaches to voting amid pandemic
Editor’s note: This article was produced through a partnership between South Dakota News Watch and the Solutions Journalism Network, a national non-profit group that supports rigorous journalism about responses to problems.
South Dakota election officials are taking a wide range of steps — and implementing some creative measures — to ensure
Long-term care residents in SD suffering health crisis due to COVID-19 isolation
As nursing homes and assisted-living facilities have restricted the movements of residents and eliminated most in-person visits by friends and families amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an unexpected elderly health crisis has emerged in South Dakota and across the country.
The mental and physical health of many residents of long-term care
CDC report on Smithfield COVID outbreak in Sioux Falls was redone with ‘watered down’ safety recommendations
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved a final report on a massive COVID-19 outbreak at the Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls, then retracted that report and redid a second final report with much less stringent worker-safety recommendations.
The first report was dated April 21, 2020, and
SD sheep farmers hurting as pandemic reduces demand and processing capacity
In March 2020, the sheep-farming industry in South Dakota — the sixth-largest in the country — was humming along nicely.
After a few sluggish decades, prices for meat and wool were at or near all-time highs and markets were stable. Fine-dining restaurants and the cruise-line industry continued to fuel strong demand for
Crash experts question Ravnsborg’s car-deer explanation and raise concerns of distracted driving
HIGHMORE, S.D. – An experienced traffic-accident reconstruction expert is casting doubt on the claim made by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg that he thought he hit a deer with his car the night of Sept. 12 when in fact he had struck and killed a man.
Kurt Weiss is
Family of victim in attorney general crash worries if investigation will be thorough; Ravnsborg makes formal statement
Two cousins of the man killed when a car driven by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg struck him say they worry the investigation into the incident is not being handled properly.
Victor and Nick Nemec are both cousins of Joseph Boever, 55, who was killed when Ravnsborg struck him