Joe Hart -- associate editor
Joe Hart spent much of his newspaper career as an outstanding sports journalist, beginning as a prep and college sports reporter for the Janesville Gazette and spending 14 years as sports editor with The Capital Times.
After his tenure as sports editor, he stepped down in 2002 to become an associate editor involved in other facets of the news business, including sharpening the local news coverage and its daily presentation in the paper. And for three years, he contributed a regular sports column. Whatever he did, he did with total dedication to quality.
A native of DeKalb, Ill., and a 1971 graduate of Northern Illinois University, Joe left Janesville in 1976 for the West Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, where he worked on the paper's copy desk. He was offered a sports reporting position at The Capital Times in 1978. He quickly became one of the city's best read sports reporters and was sent to Lake Placid for the 1980 Winter Olympics, where he did a masterful job covering the record-breaking five gold medals of Madison's own Eric Heiden and chronicling the U.S. hockey team's "Miracle on Ice," and the UW-Madison athletes -- Mark Johnson and Bob Suter -- who were an integral part of it.
In 1987, he coordinated the department's ambitious project to pick the best moments in Wisconsin sports history, a highly acclaimed package that many sports fans have saved to this day. (The Packers' win in the Ice Bowl was No. 1).
He became sports editor in 1988, directing the coverage through the breakthrough years of both Wisconsin football and basketball and setting the stage as the department built into the future.
Although he is best known for his work in sports, Joe could do a wide variety of jobs in the newsroom, at one point coordinating our design and photo staff and then in 2004, taking our newsroom's part in the annual production of Capital Newspapers' Answer Book, a 200-page guide to life in south-central Wisconsin.
Joe and his wife Sharon live on Madison's southwest side.
From Dave Zweifel, editor emeritus
Joe Hart
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