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 Association First Amendment Committee
Archive of work: South Dakota News Watch
Bart Pfankuch
Total 376 Posts
Tourism slowdown could devastate Keystone, gateway to Mount Rushmore
As the tourism industry across South Dakota faces potential economic disaster in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the small town of Keystone is in a particularly precarious position.
The town of 327 people nestled in the central Black Hills at the base of Mount Rushmore National Memorial survives
SD businesses and governments brace for ‘almost non-existent’ 2020 tourism season due to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has almost completely shut down tourism in South Dakota, one of the state’s largest industries.
The loss of visitors now and potentially into the summer tourism season threatens to cut off a vital economic lifeline for businesses and their employees and eliminate a major source
Municipal elections and SD presidential primary could be delayed due to COVID-19
Amid growing concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, South Dakota lawmakers will consider a bill to postpone upcoming city elections in Sioux Falls, Brookings and other cities at least until June, and to allow Gov. Kristi Noem to delay the presidential primary from June 2 to July 28.
The elections
Legislative special session likely needed to redo state budget due to COVID-19 pandemic
The South Dakota Legislature will likely hold a special session by the end of June to address financial uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and to potentially remake the coming year’s spending plan passed earlier this month, legislative fiscal leaders say.
Members of the Legislature’s Joint Appropriations
Beef producers in SD reeling from COVID-19 epidemic and price irregularities
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned a bad situation for South Dakota beef producers into a crisis in which low market prices and corresponding revenue losses may force some ranchers into bankruptcy.
Beef producers are seeing what in January was an $80 profit on each animal sold fall to a
Sioux Falls biotech firm rushing to develop coronavirus treatment
A Sioux Falls company — with its team of scientists and a herd of genetically engineered cows — is working quickly to develop and produce an effective treatment for people infected with the coronavirus.
SAb Biotherapeutics has emerged as a major player in the effort to generate a viable antidote to the
Land ownership question hovers over $185M Sioux Falls redevelopment plan
Questions about the ownership of a strip of land within the Sioux Steel Co. site in downtown Sioux Falls has created a new, unexpected hurdle for the proposed $185 million redevelopment of the property.
The land in question was once a channel of the Big Sioux River and has ownership