Hello everyone! I’m Abby Becker, and I will be taking over as editor-in-chief of the nation’s sixth-oldest, independent five-day-a-week student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal.
Day in and day out, a staff of dedicated students populate a well-loved and well-worn office in Vilas Hall. Until 2 or 3 a.m., these student journalists make calls, conduct interviews, write stories, edit photos, draw comics and design pages until they can barely stand to look at their computers anymore. And all for what? To produce a daily newspaper filled with complete and accurate coverage of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and its surrounding community.
Some may ask, “Why?”
Why put in 40 to 50 hours of unpaid work per week in a newsroom littered with empty coffee cups and the occasional mouse, writing stories for a paper that will only be on stands for one day before the next issue unceremoniously replaces it? Why skip class to cover events for a student publication? And, in a world of immediate news, why not just tweet a headline and leave it at that?
Because we at The Daily Cardinal want to start a conversation. As the next editor in chief of this publication rich in history and dedicated to delivering daily news, I am striving to motivate you, our readers, not only to pick up the paper but to talk about it as well. The paper is in our control—altering layout, tweaking stories, editing photos—until each issue is placed on the stands the next morning. Then it’s in your hands. Read the stories, look at the photos, laugh at the comics, but most importantly, talk about it with people you know. Whether you agree or disagree with an article that’s printed in The Daily Cardinal, let us know. We want your feedback.
Next year marks a year of great change in student journalism on campus. UW-Madison is the only campus with two independent, competing daily newspapers. Next year, however, our campus competitor, The Badger Herald, will be moving to an online model and will only print two days a week. The absence of a second daily newspaper will not change the drive The Daily Cardinal staff possesses to produce a quality product day to day. Not only are we proud to bring our readers a print newspaper each day, we also operate under a breaking-news mentality in which we use our website and social media to bring you the most accurate news first.
Journalism is fluid; it is constantly changing and so is The Daily Cardinal. As a Cardinalista through and through, I am committing myself to taking 121 years of tradition and building upon it to fit the modern age of journalism. I pledge to all of you, our readers, to deliver a daily print newspaper and a consistently strong online presence to keep the conversation going.
Let’s make a paper.
