When Midwest Energy News started in March, it was intended to be only a news aggregation site. Our primary function is to find the most important stories about regional energy issues and assemble them in one place.

Over time, though, we’ve discovered that the aggregation format isn’t enough. Sometimes there’s more to say about what’s in the news, and sometimes there are stories that aren’t being covered to the extent that we’d like.

So today, we bring you our first original enterprise story – a look at how Wisconsin’s new statewide standards for wind farms might impact developments elsewhere in the region. It’s written by Kari Lydersen, a Chicago-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other outlets (fellow editors should also take note that her copy required minimal edits and was turned in days ahead of deadline).

Because Midwest Energy News is a non-commercial operation, we welcome republication of this story via Creative Commons licensing. Just be sure to give appropriate credit and a link back to the site.

We have a limited budget for producing original journalism, and rather than go “content farm” and pump out rewrites of news releases, we’ve opted to focus on a smaller number of in-depth stories. That means, at least for now, we’ll only be publishing original work about once a week.

As always, thanks for reading. Your comments are welcome below or via email.

Ken is the director of the Energy News Network at Fresh Energy and is a founding editor of both Midwest Energy News and Southeast Energy News. Prior to joining Fresh Energy, he was the managing editor for online news at Minnesota Public Radio. He started his journalism career in 2002 as a copy editor for the Duluth News Tribune before spending five years at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, where he worked as a copy editor, online producer, features editor and night city editor. A Nebraska native, Ken has a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master's degree from the University of Oregon. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors.