Title: content director / investigative reporter
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 307 Posts
Easter Sunday offers break in church attendance decline
South Dakota churches will undoubtedly see attendance jump during Easter services on Sunday as Christians come out in large numbers to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But behind the scenes, many church leaders will worry whether they can maintain the holiday momentum as religious affiliation and church attendance continue
How some South Dakota churches are adapting to attendance declines
Falling attendance and membership at many South Dakota churches has prompted pastors, leaders and elders to look for creative ways to keep people engaged and pursuing a larger purpose.
Constanze Hagmaier, bishop of the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said that includes using technology to
Serenity Dennard disappearance: 2019 mystery still causing misery
One of the biggest mysteries in all of South Dakota — the unknown fate of 9-year-old Serenity Dennard — elicits one singular emotion more than any other for those who loved, cared for or searched for the precocious girl who disappeared from a Black Hills youth home more than four years ago.
South Dakota Republicans criticize program that provided $3.8B to state
South Dakota’s Republican congressional delegation and GOP Gov. Kristi Noem supported funding measures signed by President Donald Trump that provided more than $10 billion in federal funding to the state to battle and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But they’re not so willing to praise a program approved
11 billion-pound mystery: The chemicals South Dakota trains carry
Each year, trains carry nearly 11 billion pounds of chemicals through South Dakota’s cities and countryside, much of it on century-old tracks, a South Dakota News Watch analysis has revealed.
Finding out which specific compounds are in those potentially toxic payloads is extremely difficult or even impossible for the
Civil civics: Observers note more positive pulse in South Dakota politics
As it winds to a close, the 2023 legislative session in South Dakota will likely be remembered as the year of the great tax cut debate and for the somewhat surprising willingness of the GOP-led Legislature to reject several proposals from a popular Republican governor.
But many observers and participants
Exclusive: How South Dakota spent $14 billion of pandemic relief funds
South Dakota received nearly $14 billion in federal COVID-19 funding from March 2020 through January, according to an internal state fiscal report obtained exclusively by South Dakota News Watch.
The document tallies the $13.84 billion intended to help governments, businesses, organizations and individuals survive and recover from a pandemic