Political journalists Dee J. Hall of WisconsinWatch.org and Matthew DeFour of the Wisconsin State Journal will discuss political journalism at the Writer’s Life Lecture Series event held at 7 p.m. on Oct. 27 in Room 240 at the Downtown Campus of Madison College, 211 N. Carroll Street. The public is invited free of charge.

Hall, managing editor and co-founder of WisconsinWatch.org, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, has won more than three dozen journalism awards during her journalism career that has spanned more than three decades.

Prior to WisconsinWatch.org, Hall was a statehouse reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, and her work there includes uncovering political corruption at the state level in 2001. Hall’s investigative reporting exposed high-level state government corruption that led to criminal charges against top Democratic and Republican lawmakers and their aides. As a result of Hall’s reporting work, new rules were enacted that prohibits campaigning in state offices and on state time.

DeFour, statehouse reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, has received many awards for his political and investigative journalism, such as the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Open Record/FOIA Award (2009), the Milwaukee Press Club award (2008) for Best Multi-Story Coverage of a Single Event (Brittany Zimmermann homicide); the Illinois Press Association Knight Chair Award for Best Investigative-Enterprise Reporting (2006); and the Illinois Associated Press Editors Association 1st place award (2006) for investigative reporting. He has been a Wisconsin State Journal reporter for ten years, covering education and government. Prior to joining the Wisconsin State Journal, DeFour was a reporter for the Beacon News in Illinois.

The panel discussion will be followed by a question-and-answer period.

The college’s Journalism Program and Creative Writing Program sponsor the Writer’s Life Lecture Series event.