The Daily Cardinal

The Daily Cardinal

Daily Cardinal newspaper box featuring Fall 2015 Welcome Back issue
Type Daily newspaper
Format Tabloid
Owner(s) The Daily Cardinal Media Corporation
Founded 1892
Political alignment Moderate, leaning Liberal
Headquarters Madison, WI, U.S.
Website www.dailycardinal.com

The Daily Cardinal is a student newspaper that serves the University of Wisconsin–Madison community. One of the oldest student newspapers in the country,[1] it began publishing on Monday, April 4, 1892.[2] The newspaper is financially and editorially independent of the university. Theda Berry is the newspaper's current editor-in-chief.

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 Mondays and Thursdays during the academic year in a tabloid print format and maintains an independent website. The print 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, Life & Style and Science.

Awards

In 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2013 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". 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, [7] 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. Until recently, UW-Madison was one of few American universities with competing daily news publications, though starting in 2014 that competition largely shifted online with the Cardinal cutting Friday editions and the Herald publishing print issues once a week.[8][9]

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.[10] The same year, it became free, and has remained so until this day.[11]

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.[12] The story received the 2001 Diversity Story of the Year award for student journalism,[13] awarded by the Associated Collegiate Press and the Los Angeles Times.

In 2012, the Cardinal celebrated the 120th anniversary of its first publication with an alumni gathering featuring presentations by former Cardinal staffers who had gone on to win Pulitzer prizes and Emmy awards, a gala banquet at the nearby Orpheum Theater and a tribute to Anthony Shadid, who had died earlier in the year.[14]

In November 2015, the Cardinal announced it would begin a new publication schedule by publishing two print issues per week while also moving to a new online platform, effective with the start of the spring semester.[15] The new publishing schedule, following a similar cut in print publishing by the Herald the previous year, left the UW-Madison campus without a daily newspaper print edition for the first time in decades.[16]

Official history

It Doesn't End With Us, the official history of The Daily Cardinal, was published in 2007.

Notable alumni

References

  1. ↑ Kayla Johnson. "New editor ready to take charge". The Daily Cardinal, May 4, 2011.
  2. ↑ Ariel Shapiro. "A tradition of centuries past carries on". The Daily Cardinal, November 5, 2009.
  3. ↑ Society of Professional Journalists. "2001 Mark of Excellence Region 6 Winners/Finalists".
  4. ↑ Society of Professional Journalists. "2002 Mark of Excellence Region 6 Winners/Finalists".
  5. ↑ Society of Professional Journalists. "SPJ Announces 2005 Region 6 Mark of Excellence Award Winners". April 3, 2006.
  6. ↑ Society of Professional Journalists. "SPJ Announces 2006 Region 6 Mark of Excellence Award Winners". March 23, 2007.
  7. ↑ Mark Lisheron. "A campus newspaper war in Wisconsin". American Journalism Review (April 1999)
  8. ↑ Abby Becker. "New printing model, same standard of excellence". The Daily Cardinal, Jan 30, 2014.
  9. ↑ Tara Golshan. "I'm graduating with a degree in the next generation The Badger Herald". The Badger Herald, May 7, 2015.
  10. ↑ Rogers Worthington. "Tussle between college papers is not just academic". Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1987.
  11. ↑ Allison Hantschel. 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 0-7884-4447-6
  12. ↑
  13. ↑ Associated Collegiate Press. "2001 ACP Story of the Year".
  14. ↑ Alison Bauter. "'Daily Cardinal' alumni celebrate 120 years, pay tribute to Anthony Shadid". Isthmus, April 30, 2012.
  15. ↑ Jim Dayton. "A new era in Daily Cardinal history". The Daily Cardinal, November 12, 2015.
  16. ↑ Nico Savidge. "No daily newspaper left at UW-Madison as Cardinal cuts production". Wisconsin State Journal, November 13, 2015.
  17. ↑ The Daily Cardinal Alumni Association. "DCAA Award Winners 1999-2005".

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/7/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.