We’re excited to announce that SWT is now a four-time Milwaukee Press Club award winner!
After awarding SWT a Silver Award for Best Blog last year for our 2024 work, the Milwaukee Press Club honored us once again for our work in 2025 on Friday during its annual Gridiron Awards Dinner. During the dinner at the beautiful Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Press Club (the oldest continuously operating press club in the US, founded in 1885) presented its 2025 Awards for Excellence in Journalism in Wisconsin across various media formats.
The Gridiron Awards also honor non-journalists with recognition, and this year they presented with a major award: Ken-David Masur (Headline Award winner), music director and conductor with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Executive Director at Rotary Club of Milwaukee, Mary McCormick (Headliner Award winner), and Vox’s host and editorial director, Astead Herndon (Sacred Cat Award winner). Each gave a speech with shared themes of gratitude, with a lot of reverence for the city of Milwaukee, the media, the state of journalism, and the future. For Masur and McCormick, as the former moves on to new opportunities and the latter moves on to retirement, this gave them final moments of reflection to an eager room full of notable media members in the city.
SWT had a lot of pride going into the Awards Dinner, appreciating the recognition of years and many hours of work, writing, and editing to get to that point. And knowing that we were seen as good enough to be a finalist for three awards in the Online category – Best Blog, Best Website Design, and Best Online Soft Short Feature Story (for Josh’s captivating story on Tee Templeton releasing his debut album). It was great to see new and familiar faces in attendance, and to see that print, digital, and broadcast journalism are thriving in Wisconsin, both by professionals and future journalists currently in college who are creating quality work despite, and in response to, threats to journalism. You can find a full list of all the evening’s award winners here.
SWT went up against two quality blogs: Spectrum News 1’s (Hailey Kunz, Rachel Ryan, Aly Prouty, Anthony DaBruzzi, Mandy Hague) blog Live Updates: The Trial of Judge Hannah Dugan and Anna Lardinois’ blog MKEStartup.News. Spectrum News 1 took home the Gold, while MKEStartup.News took the Silver, and SWT the Bronze. Support them and non-AI content by checking out their work and everyone’s work in all the categories below as well!
Next up was Best Online Short Soft Feature Story. Josh’s feature went up against two great stories: Rachel Ryan of Spectrum News 1’s feature, Milwaukee all-female boxing gym gives women a chance to find ‘their power’, and Baylor Spears of Wisconsin Examiner’s feature, Wisconsin Democrats want to say ‘Bye Bye Baby’ to unfair ticket selling practices. Josh’s feature won Gold, while Rachel won Silver, and Spears won Bronze.
The final award came in Best Website Design. Also, nominated were Hailey Kunz, Rachel Ryan, and Aly Prouty of Spectrum News 1 for their excellent work on Spectrum News 1 Wisconsin. Surprisingly to us, there were only two finalists, so we knew we’d receive either Gold or Silver. Ultimately, we won Gold.
We’re proud of our achievements and of those of the other entrants. Again, we recommend checking them all out!
Below are a few personal thoughts from each of us:
Josh: Thank you to the MPC for recognizing the hard work Alex and I have put into Scummy Water Tower. It was truly an honor to receive three awards this year in meaningful categories. In addition to getting another Best Blog award, I was extremely proud that my feature on Tee Templeton and my work as a web designer (with a lot of much-needed help from Alex, and feedback of countless others) both received Gold Awards. I’ve been writing as a freelance writer since 2009, so it felt gratifying to not only get an award for a specific article I wrote but to place first. Likewise, it was exciting to have my web design skills be honored in such a notable way. Shout out to West Bend East High School and UW Oshkosh for setting the foundation for my journey as a journalist, and to Moraine Park Technical College for web design. I had a great time at the event and felt much more confident heading into the event as I knew what to expect from the event. Thank you to every reader, artist, and PR person who helped bring great music and entertainment content to our attention. I look forward to continuing to build SWT into a destination media company that people go to to learn about great artists and great people.
Alex: Thank you to every single reader of SWT, to every person who shares our content, and to every one who tells their friends about us and spreads the good word about SWT. And those rare ones that have some exclusive merch out in the wild. Josh & I see you. We love you, thank you. We’re forever grateful and appreciative of the artists who contribute essays, as they, along with Josh & I, continue to create quality over quantity content, not clickbait. We’re not perfect, but we remain adamant to be consistent and do better. I’m so grateful to all who shared feedback with us over the past year, whether it was how much they appreciated our content in general or specifically my content, like Spotlights and Reviews, and those who provided functional or appearance-based feedback that made the site better. All this positive validation keeps us motivated during the long nights/early mornings and weekends as we strive to advocate for good but usually lesser-known artists. Thank you.
For me, this year’s MPC Awards were the culmination of an idea I had years ago to create a site to give freelance music journalist Josh a stable platform for more people to see his work. Over time, as we’ve both bought into the idea of SWT, I’ve helped facilitate many things for both SWT as a whole and for Josh and his writing. I’m happy to see Josh being recognized for his writing! And be in a room full of journalists and media members, he could network with. Josh’s writing and Tee’s story are definitely worth reading and rewarding. On an even more selfish level, it was great to receive recognition from others for the final (current) product of the site’s design that was based on dozens and dozens of ideas, suggestions, edits I’ve made, and feedback Josh & I discussed that became changes that have made the site look and function as it does presently. It will continue to evolve. In the near future, I’m excited to look into the other blogs that beat us out in 2025 and support them and other nominees as well. Support local media, especially in print, and good online media. And artists and creatives in general. What they have, AI can’t quite replicate.
We love to advocate for objectively good music, creatives, and good people. We look forward to adding more awards and recognition over the years as SWT grows and evolves.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
Scummy Water Tower Productions co-founder, reviewer, business manager, and editor. Thank you for visiting this site, scummywatertower.com, and YouTube for Water Tower Sessions and SWT Interviews. And all of our socials.
Questions, feedback, or more? Contact me: alex@scummywatertower.com
