The Milwaukee Press Club, which bills itself as "North America's oldest continuously operating press club," said in a letter to top Wauwatosa officials that it supports Tosa Forward News' work and calls on city staff to recognize the site as news media under the city's policies for cooperating with reporters.
The letter, signed by the organization's Board of Governors and dated May 1, was submitted at City Hall to the attention of Mayor Dennis McBride and Common Council President Joe Phillips, according to the board.
"We encourage the City of Wauwatosa to recognize Mr. Paulsen and his website as a credible media outlet," the letter says. "Because the industry's landscape is constantly evolving, we believe it's appropriate to recognize journalists outside the traditional legacy newspaper and broadcast organizations."
The letter follows an April 22 article that explained that Tosa Forward News, since it launched in August 2025, has been mostly denied the kinds of accommodations that the city staff has granted other news organizations seeking information and comments for news stories. City leaders have referenced a media policy that allows them to determine on a case-by-case basis who qualifies for responses to news inquiries.
For readers who might look to Tosa Forward News for coverage of their community, that policy puts them at a disadvantage, because the website's reporting, however thorough, will be limited by the city's lack of cooperation.
David Paulsen
City leaders have not provided a detailed explanation for why they have excluded Tosa Forward News from receiving media advisories, invitations to news conferences and responses to questions for news stories. The city's communications manager, in an email last month, alluded to the staff's "current capacity" as one reason for the city's preference to limit the outlets it accommodates to ones "that serve broad segments of Wauwatosa."
Since Tosa Forward News posted its article raising awareness of how the city's media policy was being applied, some of the website's more than 1,000 subscribers have contacted McBride, Phillips and other members of the Common Council seeking clarification and voicing their support for changes to that policy.
Tosa Forward News asked each of the 11 members of the council by email if they wished to comment on whether the city's media policy merited new scrutiny.
Ernie Franzen, a retired Journal Sentinel journalist who represents District 3 on the council, said he heard from two people after the initial article posted. "I think the city’s media policy should always be under review to make sure the city is responding appropriately to all requests for public information," he said.
Indy Stluka, who took his seat on the council last month representing District 8, said one constituent had contacted him about the media policy.
"I’m still in the process of getting up to speed on the current policy and how it is implemented in practice," he told Tosa Forward News. "I believe it’s important that our approach is clear, consistent and reflects how residents are accessing news today, and I think it’s reasonable for the council to take a closer look at whether the current framework is meeting those goals."
McBride told Tosa Forward News on May 4 that he had been contacted by nine individuals about this issue. At that time, he said he had not yet seen the letter from the Milwaukee Press Club.
Tosa Forward News has been copied on some of the email exchanges between McBride and the residents who contacted him, and he has defended the city's policy and its application in his response to them.
"The fact is that Mr. Paulsen is not being denied information," McBride told those residents. "Transparency is important to us and we provide an abundance of resources to him as well as to other residents." He cited the press releases that city staff post to the city's website, livestreams of city meetings, other online informational resources and additional staff communications.
All news organizations do benefit from such public-facing resources, though reporters also typically make follow-up inquiries with municipal authorities, to provide more thorough coverage and include details that are not yet released to the public in other ways. For example, the city's webpage on Hart Park flood repairs has not been updated in two months.
McBride also claimed that Tosa Forward News' inquiries were "neither reasonable nor typically made by others."
"In response to Mr. Paulsen’s earlier request that the city include his website on our media list, a few months ago I convened a meeting with our city attorney, our communications director and a retired journalist," McBride said in his responses. "We discussed the legal and practical implications and limitations of his request, and unanimously concluded that we could not satisfy Mr. Paulsen’s demands without imposing a serious burden on staff time and taxpayer resources.
"We also could not satisfy all of his demands without also treating every other website in Wauwatosa as we do the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the local broadcast outlets."
After this story posted, McBride shared with a reader a letter he wrote in response to the Milwaukee Press Club. In it, the mayor repeated some of the same "staff capacity" justifications for the city excluding Tosa Forward News from cooperation under its the media policy.
Tosa Forward News obtained through an open records request the city's media list, which contains 28 email addresses. While the Journal Sentinel has one suburban reporter assigned to Wauwatosa stories and the Milwaukee Business Journal follows business news, few of the other outlets cover the Tosa community more than occasionally. None covers it day to day the way Tosa Forward News intends for its readers.
Tosa Forward News also reviewed all its emailed inquires sent to the city staff seeking information or comment for stories during the website's first three months of coverage. Its number of inquiries during that period averaged about two a week, not including requests to clarify the media policy.
It is not unusual for reporters covering municipal beats to keep in regular contact with communications personnel and other city staff to ensure the coverage of municipal matters is thorough, accurate and up to date.
Since late last fall, Tosa Forward News has mostly stopped making routine inquiries with city staff, because those inquiries are consistently denied. The website has continued seeking and obtaining city records that the staff is required to provide under the state's open records law.
Tosa Forward News frequently communicates with the Wauwatosa School District seeking information and assistance with stories about school news, and district personnel generally have been cooperative. The website also receives media advisories from Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley's office and has reported on his news conferences.
The Milwaukee Press Club letter calling on the city to accommodate more diverse news outlets is signed by board members who represent several of the "legacy" outlets already on the city's media list, including the Journal Sentinel (Tom Daykin), WTMJ-TV (Susan Kim) and WDJT-TV (A.J. Bayatpour).
"The Milwaukee Press Club Board of Governors supports the work of journalist David Paulsen and acknowledges his website, Tosa Forward News, as a legitimate news source," the letter says. "He has a long-standing, extensive journalism credentials and is a carefully vetted member in good standing of the Milwaukee Press Club."
- David Paulsen, editor of Tosa Forward News, is a Tosa East Towne resident and can be reached at editor@tosanews.com.
Other news posted today:
David Paulsen
