Doug Moe: Story of Daily Cardinal relights fire for news biz

Doug Moe  —  1/16/2008 9:36 am

SOME TIME ago I suggested that newspaper people weary of reading the gloomy forecasts for the future of their business need only watch "Deadline USA" to get their fire back.

It's still a good idea -- few scenes can get a journalist's blood stirring better than that movie's closer, when a gangster, the subject of an expose in Humphrey Bogart's (dying) newspaper, asks Bogart over the phone what the racket is in the background.

"That's the press, baby," Bogart replies. "The press. And there's nothing you can do about it."

Now, thanks to Allison Hantschel, I have another suggestion. Hantschel is a former editor of the UW-Madison's century-plus-old student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, and she has just published a book, "It Doesn't End With Us: The Story of The Daily Cardinal." It's not just a great yarn about a newspaper but an interesting history of the University of Wisconsin and the city of Madison as well.

Hantschel, 32, lives in Chicago. She was at the Cardinal during its darkest hour, in February 1995, when, facing financial ruin, the paper shut down publication for several months. When we spoke Tuesday, Hantschel recalled that the Cardinal at that point owed $137,700 and had cash reserves of $43.71. She said she may someday forget the names of her grandchildren but she will always remember those figures.

Few would have guessed, or dared hope, that nearly seven months later the Cardinal would be back in business with a headline that blared the news: "Start the Presses!" A combination of hard work, resolve, begging and creditor understanding made it happen.

At one low moment, when they were still trying to dig themselves out, Hantschel said to a colleague the words that would later become the title of her book: "It doesn't end with us. I don't know how I know that, but I do. It ends somewhere else down the road, with some other bunch of kids. It just doesn't end with us."

It was her knowledge of the paper's history that prompted Hantschel to say that. She thought of Richard Davis, fired as incoming editor of the Cardinal in 1938 because he was Jewish, who had published a strike paper that was supported financially and editorially by William T. Evjue of The Capital Times. Then there was a 1960s Cardinal editor, Gail Bensinger(successor to CBS and CNN-bound Jeff Greenfield), who had to defend her staff against right-wingers in the State Capitol (imagine that) who called them communist.

The more Hantschel learned about the Cardinal's history, the more she thought, "This is a good story." She made more contacts while helping to found the Daily Cardinal Alumni Association in the late 1990s, and then, in 2000, envisioning a book, she began to do interviews and archival research. It turned out to be a hell of a story.

"The Daily Cardinal survived two staff strikes," Hantschel writes in the introduction, "a hostile takeover attempt, a printing press shutdown, a CIA probe, six offices, six dozen leaders, bombs, bullets, tear gas, and death threats."

There was much controversy over the years, but emotions may never have run higher than after the August 1970 bombing of the Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall on campus, which resulted in the death of a young researcher. A Cardinal editorial in the aftermath, which expressed regret about the death but cast it against what the editorial called "mass murder" in Vietnam, enraged many. Even The Capital Times attacked the Cardinal in a front-page editorial. Advertisers deserted, beginning a financial decline that culminated years later with the temporary shutdown.

What no one has ever accused The Daily Cardinal of is a lack of passion. Allison Hantschel's book, brimming with tales of all those young, aggressive, talented, self-righteous, wrongheaded, tireless and hopeful journalists, is itself a passionate work, and rightly so.

"It Doesn't End With Us," available now at the University Book Store, made me jealous for my own student newspaper days. And now I am remembering an interview I had not so long ago with a couple of Daily Cardinal reporters, after I had written a book about the days of varsity boxing on the Madison campus. They asked good questions about the sport, and how it ended in tragedy, and then they said they wanted to ask me one more thing, something they asked everyone they interviewed.

"Go ahead."

"What's your all-time favorite rock and roll album?"

Heard something Moe should know? Call 252-6446, write P.O. Box 8060, Madison, WI 53708, or e-mail dmoe@madison.com

Doug Moe  —  1/16/2008 9:36 am