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🙁 As of April 2026, Tone Madison is no longer actively in operation.

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JT Cestkowski

JT Cestkowski is a video and print journalist who has worked for several outlets in Wisconsin including WKOW and UpNorthNews. He now now travels the state writing freelance stories about worker organizing and water quality.

September 13, 2022

The slow drip of Madison’s coffee-shop unions

Politics

Successful organizing efforts at Colectivo and a downtown Starbucks set the stage for a long-term struggle.

JT Cestkowski

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Tone Madison was a journalist-owned, reader-supported website covering culture and politics in Madison, Wisconsin. We launched in October 2014 and kept publishing our journalism until April 2026, when Tone Madison’s worker-owners made the painful decision to close the publication.

The site remains online as an archive of the work we created over nearly 12 years, but Tone Madison is no longer actively in operation.

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