The Daily Cardinal history

In 1942, Cardinal founder Young returned to edit the paper for a day.

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.

In 1969, a group of conservative UW students, frustrated by the Cardinal’s unrelenting liberalism, founded The Badger Herald as a right-wing alternative.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.