The Daily Cardinal

The Daily Cardinal

Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Tabloid
Owner	The Daily Cardinal Media Corporation
Editor	Kayla Johnson (changes annually)
Founded	1892
Political alignment	Moderate, leaning Liberal
Headquarters	Madison, WI, U.S.
Official website	www.dailycardinal.com

The Daily Cardinal is a student newspaper that serves the University of Wisconsin–Madison community. The sixth oldest daily student newspaper in the country,^[1] it began publishing on Monday, April 4, 1892.^[2] The newspaper is financially and editorially independent of the university.

The Cardinal's motto, printed at the bottom of every front page and taken from an 1894 declaration by the university's board of regents, is "...the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

Circulation

The Daily Cardinal is published Monday through Friday during the academic year in both a tabloid print format and in electronic form on the Web. The daily press run of 10,000 is distributed throughout the campus community. Nearly 200 undergraduate and graduate student volunteers and employees work at the paper. Its daily sections include News, Opinion, Arts and Sports, and its weekly sections are Features, Food and Science.

Awards

In 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2006, the Cardinal was the recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence award for best daily college newspaper of the year in Region 6 (Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin).^[3][4][5][6]

Since 2000, the Cardinal has won 61 awards from the SPJ and Associated Collegiate Press, 55 regional and 6 national.

History

The beginning of sifting and winnowing: 1892-1932

The Daily Cardinal was founded by Monroe, Wisconsin natives William Wesley Young, the University of Wisconsin–Madison's first journalism student, and William Saucerman to be a rival to the monthly student paper Aegis. Four hundred free copies of the paper were made available to Wisconsin students on April 4, 1892. For the first month of production, Young rode his horse down State Street to the offices of the Madison Democrat, which printed the Cardinal. The newspaper's name was decided by a vote of university students, "Cardinal" representing one of the school colors.

During the early years of the paper, the founder of the university's journalism school, Willard G. Bleyer, was a reporter and editor as an undergraduate. The experience was formative in his views on the teaching of journalism.

While against World War I at its outset, the Cardinal developed favorable attitudes toward the war, especially following the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice. The Cardinal did not initially support the Second World War either, but later added special military sections to the paper to help coordinate the war effort.

Making an impression: 1932-1960

During the Great Depression the Cardinal first earned its reputation for radicalism. Disagreeing with a policy of mandatory military training for male undergraduates to prepare for the impending World War II and running a letter to the editor signed by Junior Women discussing free love led U.S. Senate nominee John B. Chapple to declare that the Cardinal was controlled by "Reds, Atheists and free love advocates".^{[citation needed]} The UW Board of Regents revoked the Cardinal’s title as "official University newspaper" following this discourse and threatened to close the paper down until a compromise added a faculty member and a regent to the Cardinal board.

In 1940, the Cardinal moved out of its office east of Memorial Union to a building on University Avenue, on the land where Vilas Communication Hall sits today. In 1956, the Cardinal board donated the land to the university in an agreement stipulating that the Cardinal would enjoy rent-free tenancy in the new building. The Cardinal's offices remain in Vilas Hall today.

In 1942, Cardinal founder Young returned to edit the paper for a day. The New York Times wrote on the occasion, "Despite annual changes in student staffs, a few college newspapers in the country have acquired a definite character. One of these is the Daily Cardinal of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The Cardinal is proud of its liberal tradition. Because it fights cleanly and with a sense of responsibility, its youthful passion for righteousness does not burn less brightly."

A radical reputation: 1960-1988

During the 1960s, the Cardinal developed a national reputation for its vehement left-wing politics,^{[citation needed]} strongly protesting the Vietnam War and supporting Civil Rights in its editorials. In 1969, a group of conservative UW students, frustrated by the Cardinal’s unrelenting liberalism, founded The Badger Herald as a right-wing alternative. While both papers have largely shed their ideological rigidity, the Cardinal is still generally perceived as the more liberal campus paper and the Herald the more conservative.^{[citation needed]} UW remains the only university with two competing daily school newspapers.^[7]

The 1970s saw the Cardinal maintain its strong issue advocacy, but opinion began to shift to more campus, rather than national, angles. In the last half of the decade, the paper continually attacked the university for its holdings in corporations that participated in apartheid in South Africa.

In 1987 the Cardinal survived a hostile takeover attempt by the Herald when then-president of the Daily Cardinal Board of Directors David Atkins conspired with Herald Publisher Richard Ausman to hire Herald staffers for Cardinal leadership positions and eventually merge the papers.^[8] The same year, it became free, and has remained so until this day.^{[clarification needed]}

Strife and shutdown: 1988-1995

In the beginning of the difficult stretch for the Cardinal, in 1988 the university announced it would shut down the paper’s presses, then located in Vilas Hall. Fortunately for the Cardinal, the university decided to sell the presses to UW–Extension, which remained the Cardinal’s printer for the next five years. Today, the Cardinal is printed at Capital Newspapers.

In 1995, the Cardinal was forced to stop printing due to financial issues, suffering a seven-month shutdown until the necessary funds were secured to return to publication.

The Cardinal reborn: 1995-

The Cardinal returned to campus later that year with a cover depicting a cardinal rising from ashes like a phoenix. The paper repaid its remaining debts two years to the day of the shutdown.

In 2000, the Cardinal broke the story that university officials had digitally inserted a black student’s face into a photograph of white Badger football fans. The image had been used on the cover of Wisconsin’s 2001-02 undergraduate application.^[9] The story received the 2001 Diversity Story of the Year award for student journalism,^[10] awarded by the Associated Collegiate Press and Los Angeles Times.

Today, the Cardinal continues printing and distribution 5 days a week on the UW campus and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Official history

The official history of The Daily Cardinal was published in January 2008 by Heritage Books.

Notable alumni

^[11]

• Lowell Bergman, former 60 Minutes producer and tobacco industry whistleblower, portrayed in The Insider by Al Pacino; 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner; 2000, 2003 Peabody Award winner
• Tom Bernthal, former NBC News national producer, Emmy Award winner and CEO of Kelton Research
• Nancy Bobrowitz, former senior vice-president, Corporate Communications, Reuters
• Walt Bogdanich, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner (1988, 2005, 2008)
• Nathan Brackett, senior music editor, Rolling Stone
• Rita Braver, senior correspondent, CBS News Sunday Morning
• Mike Bresnahan, basketball writer for the Los Angeles Times
• James Burgess, former Wisconsin State Journal publisher
• John Darnton, New York Times features editor, 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Scott Dikkers, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Onion, Jim's Journal cartoonist
• Milton Erickson, psychiatrist
• Ellen Foley, former Wisconsin State Journal editor-in-chief
• H. Jack Geiger, medical scholar and human rights activist, two-time Nobel Prize winner
• Abigail Goldman, Los Angeles Times business reporter, 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Jeff Greenfield, CBS senior political analyst
• Phil Haslanger, former The Capital Times managing editor
• Adam Horowitz, co-executive producer of Lost
• Ben Karlin, former The Daily Show executive producer; 2000, 2004 Peabody Award winner
• Andy Katz, ESPN senior basketball writer
• Tim Kelley, Wisconsin State Journal managing editor
• John Kovalic, Dork Tower cartoonist
• David I. Leavitt, Greenwire editor
• Richard Leonard, former Milwaukee Journal editor
• Mike Loew, writer, The Onion
• Karl E. Meyer, former New York Times editorial board member
• Eric Newhouse, 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Edwin Newman, NBC anchorman
• Miriam Ottenberg, 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Steven Pogorzelski, former geographical president, Monster.com
• Steven Reiner, producer, 60 Minutes
• Richard Schickel, film critic, Time
• Anthony Shadid, New York Times reporter, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, including in 2004 for his Washington Post coverage of the Iraq War
• Leonard Shapiro, Washington Post sports editor, writer
• Paul Soglin, current Madison mayor
• Stephen Thompson, NPR music producer and former A.V. Club editor
• Lucinda Treat, executive vice-president & general counsel for Madison Square Garden
• Neal Ulevich, 1977 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Dave Umhoefer, 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Dan Vebber, writer and supervising producer of American Dad, writer for the 78th annual Academy Awards
• Austin Wehrwein, 1953 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Jonathan Wolman, editor and publisher, Detroit News, former executive editor, Associated Press

References

1. ^ Johnson, Kayla. "New editor ready to take charge." The Daily Cardinal, 4 May 2011. http://www.dailycardinal.com/opinion/new-editor-ready-to-take-charge-1.2220656
2. ^ Shapiro, Ariel. "A tradition of centuries past carries on." The Daily Cardinal, 5 November 2009. http://www.dailycardinal.com/features/a-tradition-of-centuries-past-carries-on-1.861990
3. ^ Society of Professional Journalists. "2001 Mark of Excellence Region 6 Winners/Finalists" http://www.spj.org/moe01r6.asp
4. ^ Society of Professional Journalists. "2002 Mark of Excellence Region 6 Winners/Finalists" http://www.spj.org/moe02r6.asp
5. ^ Society of Professional Journalists. "SPJ Announces 2005 Region 6 Mark of Excellence Award Winners." April 3, 2006. http://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=563
6. ^ Society of Professional Journalists. "SPJ Announces 2006 Region 6 Mark of Excellence Award Winners." March 23, 2007. http://www.spj.org/news.asp?REF=656
7. ^ Lisheron, Mark. "A campus newspaper war in Wisconsin." American Journalism Review, April 1999. http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=3307
8. ^ Worthington, Rogers. "Tussle between college papers is not just academic." Chicago Tribune, 19 March 1987. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-03-19/news/8701210685_1_student-headline-city-editor
9. ^ [1]
10. ^ Associated Collegiate Press. "2001 ACP Story of the Year" http://www.studentpress.org/acp/winners/story01.html
11. ^ The Daily Cardinal Alumni Association. "DCAA Award Winners." 1999-2005. http://dailycardinal.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=2

Hantschel, Allison. It Doesn’t End With Us: The Story of the Daily Cardinal. How a College Newspaper’s Fight for Freedom Changed Its University, Challenged Journalism, and Influenced Hundred of Lives. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007. ISBN 0788444476