After recently celebrating 25 years as the news editor for Isthmus, Bill Lueders will start work next month with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, he said Tuesday.

Lueders will head a new project started at the center with MapLight.org, a California-based nonprofit research organization. The project tracks campaign contributions and legislation, and Lueders said he’ll be working to tell stories about the impact of money on politics.

Though Lueders said there would always be a place in his heart for the weekly publication where he held his first full-time job, he called WCIJ “the state’s most exciting journalism venture” and said it’s urgently needed.

“This is a new opportunity, a new challenge,” Lueders said. “I think we’re going to do great things.”