MADISON, WIS. — The Daily Cardinal`s irate staff is still shaking the dust off from a bold takeover attempt two weeks ago by the publisher of the arch-rival daily Badger Herald.
Madison, with a student population of 45,000, is the only university town in the nation with two independent student daily newspapers.
Ever since the conservative Badger Herald, with a circulation of 20,000, went daily last fall, it has been locked in a life-death struggle for advertisers with the left-leaning Cardinal, circulation 15,000.
The takeover attempt used a Trojan horse strategy, with Cardinal Board President David Atkins, a political science major, conspiring with Badger Herald Publisher Richard Ausman. Ausman, a business major, has long wanted to merge the 95-year-old Cardinal into the 18-year-old Herald.
But Ausman was barred from entering the Cardinal`s offices, and the takeover was vigorously and successfully resisted.
``I would have handcuffed myself to the desk,`` said Rob Ritzenthaler, city editor.
Student journalism has a long, tumultuous history at the University of Wisconsin, and others have tried, and failed, to bring the independent, often unruly Daily Cardinal under heel.
The university closed the paper down in 1932 for publishing a letter advocating free love. In 1938, the firing of the paper`s Jewish editor by its fraternity-dominated board sparked a walkout by staffers, who published a strike paper for two months.
Throughout the turbulent `60s and `70s, the Daily Cardinal became outspokenly anti-establishment. It was a persistent critic of the nation`s role in Vietnam, and of the University of Wisconsin`s involvement in military affairs.
After one student confrontation with police, the Daily Cardinal`s front page blared, ``Fascists in Blue Crack Skulls on Bascom Hill,`` recalled one staffer.
Born in 1969 as a weekly right-wing alternative to the Cardinal, the Badger Herald was no less outspoken in its positions. When Mao Tse-tung died, the headline on the Herald`s editorial page proclaimed, ``Top Commie Bites Dust.``
This enraged the campus Maoists, who hung the editor in effigy and necessitated the placement of protective chicken wire over the newspaper`s windows.
But the Badger Herald had no monopoly on headlines of questionable taste. When the North Vietnamese marched into Saigon in 1975, and the American death toll had passed 44,000, the Daily Cardinal headline trumpeted, ``VICTORY!``
When the Cardinal`s faculty board members vetoed a $5,000 defense fund donation for former staff writer David Fine in 1976, the Cardinal`s headline cried, ``KNIFED IN THE BACK; FACULTY BOARD STABS PAPER.`` Fine was convicted of the 1970 bombing of the university`s Army Math Research Center in which a mathematics graduate student was killed.
It can be argued that both papers have changed since the mid-1970s. Gone are the partisan headlines, and for the most part, so are the partisan staff members who saw the papers as heralds for a cause, rather than workshops for learning a profession.
``I think the presence of each of them has improved the other,`` said James Hoyt, director of the university`s journalism department. ``Both have matured and moved toward the center. More staffers are journalism majors.``
To a degree, this may merely reflect the tenor of the times, a period of less intense political feeling and greater self-interest.
Badger Herald Editor Tim Stanton admits to having a difficult time finding someone to run the editorial page, the paper`s last bastion of unbridled conservative opinion. He suspects the Cardinal may be having a similar problem.
But a portrait of Lenin, and the Spanish Republican civil war slogan,
``No Pasaran!`` still adorn the walls of the Cardinal`s newsroom. And both Stanton and Cardinal Editor John Keefe agree that there are still substantial differences between the two newspapers.
``When Gov. (Tommy) Thompson was elected, they did a story about why homosexuals hate the governor. That`s not something we would have done,``
Stanton said. Nor, he said, would the Badger Herald care to share the Daily Cardinal`s advocacy focus on the Third World, and women`s, gay, and minority rights.
But Keefe points with pride to the Cardinal`s campus, city, and state coverage, and says the Badger Herald covers planned lectures and publishes university press releases.
``From our point of view, they basically run news that is spoon fed to them,`` he said.
The Independent Press Brigade, a group of Cardinal supporters and staffers, is seeking a recall of Atkins and two board members who joined him in the takeover attempt. Such a recall is likely to get on the ballot, said Jan Jacobs, copresident of the university`s student association.
``These were individuals testing their limits and they found out fast,``
she said of students Atkins and Ausman.
``We`re transients, only here for a short length of time. The Daily Cardinal is almost 100 years old. It`s an institution.``