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Apr-29-2008Link by Link Reluctantly, a Daily Stops Its Presses, Living Online(topic overview)
CONTENTS:
- Dave Zweifel, who has been editor since 1983 and becomes editor emeritus under the transition, said the staff losses "are like breaking up a family." (More...)
- Madison is incredibly lucky, I would always say, to have two editorial voices, including a locally owned one that contributes so generously to the community year after year through the financial charity of The Evjue Foundation and the journalism and opinion leadership of a long line of outstanding editors -- Bill Evjue, Miles McMillin, Elliot Maraniss and Dave Zweifel, passionate and classic personalities all. (More...)
- The Cap Times and the State Journal actually jointly own portal Madison.com as part of the operating agreement, so the branding is not as clear as it would be in other situations. (More...)
- While acknowledging the long, proud print tradition there, the columnist, Marc Eisen, wrote: "Cap Times editors and reporters see themselves as reimagining founder Bill Evjue's progressive vision for the Internet age. (More...)
- The self-described champion of the little guy isn't ready to quit. (More...)
- With print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions. (More...)
- Labor rights were part of the progressive creed, but so was prohibitionism; the brewing companies of Wisconsin bankrolled the opposition to giving women the right to vote. (More...)
SOURCES
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Dave Zweifel, who has been editor since 1983 and becomes editor emeritus under the transition, said the staff losses "are like breaking up a family." He spoke as he was writing his final column about how he landed his first job at the paper in 1962. "I thought before the Internet and all these other external forces wreaked their havoc on us I'd be long gone," he said. "But it's happened a lot quicker than any of us expected." William T. Evjue, then at the Wisconsin State Journal, started The Capital Times out of frustration after his paper called Bob La Follette, then senator of Wisconsin, unpatriotic for opposing World War I. Evjue decided the paper would be a voice for the progressive causes championed by "Fighting Bob." Critics tried to organize advertising boycotts, had the Justice Department investigate whether it was funded by German money, and even beat up its newsboys, said Madison historian Stuart Levitan. Evjue succeeded by selling $1 subscriptions and putting out a vibrant newspaper with an attitude, he said. [1] That day has arrived in Madison, Wis. The Capital Times, the city's fabled 90-year-old daily newspaper founded in response to the jingoist fervor of World War I, stopped printing to devote itself to publishing its daily report on the Web. An avowedly progressive paper that carried the banner of its founder, William T. Evjue, The Capital Times is wrapped up with the history of two larger-than-life Wisconsin senators, the elder Robert La Follette (whom it favored) and Joseph R. McCarthy (whom it opposed).[2]
Ninety years ago, an idealistic editor made the risky move of starting a daily afternoon newspaper in Madison when the city already had two daily papers. Today, executives at The Capital Times are taking another bold step they say is needed to preserve the legacy of founder William T. Evjue -- switching much of the afternoon paper 's feisty, left-leaning journalism from newsprint to the Internet. In a move that has drawn national attention, The Capital Times today publishes the final edition of its daily broadsheet newspaper and, in addition to improving its Web site, on Wednesday shifts to printing a tabloid-format news weekly.[3] When Capital Times founder William T. Evjue negotiated to keep the afternoon print cycle in 1948 when Madison Newspapers was formed, it must have seemed a wise move, but the decline of afternoon newspapers with the advent of television and the change in living patterns had impacts that grew, decade by decade. Over the past few years it became abundantly clear a new strategic direction was essential to guarantee we could continue to pursue the peace and justice mission of The Capital Times that Dave writes about eloquently in his companion column. With a circulation falling to 17,000 in a market the size of Madison and Dane County, this big shift could have occurred last year or next year or the year after next. It starts now.[4]
In addition to creating content for a Madison website called Madison.com (which the State Journal also contributes to, although the two papers are editorially independent), the staff of the Capital Times will produce a local news insert that will be printed as part of the State Journal. Other daily papers that have closed over the past year include the Albuquerque Tribune, another afternoon newspaper. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen has posted some thoughts about the closure on his blog at PressThink and there are more details here.[5] The site will have breaking local news seven days a week, 18 hours a day, Editor Paul Fanlund told the State Journal. That's my headline. they aced the distribution part of the exam: new tabs inserted into the morning daily, the Wisconsin State Journal, which in turn gains circulation from the demise of the afternoon paper, putting the ex-afternoon paper's weeklies into way way more homes than the fading daily ever reached: 17,000 compared to 104,000 in the new arrangement. I know this isn't how they're thinking about it in Madison, but from my perspective Saturday marked the debut of a local newsblog and opinion site in Madison with an editorial staff of 40, and a web-to-print engine that is ready to start clicking. Those are basically good facts for the Cap Times. It's up to the staff to bring journalistic imagination equal to them."[6] The new weekly, 77 Square, (a reference to Madison 's reputation of being "77 square miles surrounded by reality") will be distributed on Thursdays with the State Journal and in racks, with a distribution of at least 115,000, Stoddard said. The Wisconsin State Journal has succeeded in garnering most of the Capital Times ' former subscribers and will see its average daily circulation rise from 89,000 to at least 104,000 starting Monday, Stoddard said. "We 're pleased to have The Capital Times readers, and we hope they enjoy the Wisconsin State Journal," said Bill Johnston, publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal. Dennis Chaptman, a former Capital Times city desk editor, said he thought the news operation would be challenged to tackle new ventures in both the Internet and the weekly tabloids at the same time it was losing some of its experienced reporters. There was also a reason he 's proud to say he worked at the paper, he said. "They were not afraid to try something new," Chaptman said. The Associated Press contributed to this report.[3] The paper, which had a peak circulation of more than 40,000 in the 1960s, now has fewer than 20,000 readers. The Times, which has been publishing daily for 90 years, has apparently been losing ground steadily over the past decade or so to its local competitor, The Wisconsin State Journal -- in part because the State Journal is a morning newspaper and the Capital Times is published in the afternoon.[5] The 1970s, which began so promisingly, ended bitterly on Oct. 1, 1977, with the strike of the International Typographical Union, supported by the Guild, the Wisconsin State Journal Editorial Association, and the mailers' and pressmen's unions. The strike went on for several years and took a serious toll as The Capital Times lost circulation and a large number of its next-generation staff. The unions, for their part, lost their bargaining rights and most of their jobs. Although Evjue's 1948 decision to push the State Journal into morning and Sunday publication eventually boxed in his paper, the publisher did show tremendous foresight in his will. He created The Evjue Foundation Inc. and said it must return the net proceeds of his controlling stock each year to the community for its benefit.[7] The Capital Times' and State Journal's combined earnings in 1947 were well below single-paper profits in cities around Wisconsin. In November 1948, they agreed to consolidate their publishing in one plant to be owned and managed by a new corporation, Madison Newspapers Inc. MNI would itself be owned by, and be the publisher of, both papers, sharing profits and costs. In a complicated twist, MNI would buy editorial services from Lee Enterprises for its State Journal newspaper, and The Capital Times Co. for The Capital Times newspaper. That guaranteed separate editorial staffs and news competition.[7] The Capital Times news weekly debuting Wednesday will focus on in-depth stories, analysis and liberal commentary and will have about 48 pages, Fanlund said. It will be distributed to homes with the Wednesday State Journal as well in racks as a free publication around Madison, with a circulation of around 80,000, said Phil Stoddard, circulation director for Capital Newspapers. The Capital Times will also be revamping the Rhythm arts and entertainment section that has been carried by both papers.[3] The strategy to shift operations online is seen as a long-term solution for The Capital Times, but is still a work in progress. The current strategy revolves around the Madison.com portal, which both Madison papers own under a joint arrangement mandating that they share revenues, despite being editorially independent. In addition to shifting all their focus to creating online news content, The Capital Times will also produce in the supplement "77 Square", which will be inserted in the State Journal, who has already successfully managed to snap up many of The Capital Times' subscribers.[8]
"You need to have many points of view in a debate in our society in order to arrive at the truth." The Capital Times was begun in 1917 by Evjue, a former Wisconsin State Journal editor, at the height of World War I. The paper backed Wisconsin politician Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette in his populist causes and has kept a left-leaning perspective on its opinion page. The paper has featured nationally known journalists on its pages, including former political reporter, the late John Patrick Hunter, and current associate editor John Nichols.[3] Evjue and his paper somehow survived, and soon thrived, and within two months The Capital Times circulation approached 5,000 (about one-seventh the city's population in 1918). State Journal circulation had peaked at 15,000 and was slowly declining; The Capital Times, after its harrowing birth, quickly hit 10,000 and was still climbing. Although the paper's fifth edition defiantly declared it was "not the organ of any man, any faction or any party," its wholesale devotion to Fighting Bob La Follette and progressivism was clear and undeniable. Until the state Legislature adjourned in late 1918, publisher Evjue gave prominent play to state Rep. Evjue's comments on both.[7]
"The odium of treasonable purpose" would mark La Follette forever, the New York Times editorialized. Even La Follette's college friend, Charles Van Hise, called his policies "dangerous to the country," and 421 faculty agreed. Lloyd Jones added his own invective and insinuation of treason against La Follette in February 1917. The attacks on The Capital Times began even before the paper did, as it and La Follette were burned in effigy on the university campus the night before its debut -- an event Lloyd Jones editorially celebrated, and Evjue noted on his first front page. The very day the first Cap Times hit the streets, Life magazine published a cartoon in its "Traitors" section of Kaiser Wilhelm pinning dozens of medals on La Follette. In that fevered first winter of war, the forces that fought La Follette, both domestically and internationally, combined to try to kill the new paper.[7] Two years later, when a huge Klan conclave met in full regalia at Miller Park off Fish Hatchery Road, Evjue splashed a stunning panorama photo across the top of the front page. He continued to expose Klan activities -- and the pro-Klan activities of state politicians -- until the hoods and sheets were gone. Twenty years after he exposed the Klan, Evjue took on another pathology -- McCarthyism, even before it was named. When Joseph "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy challenged incumbent Sen. Robert La Follette Jr. ("Young Bob") in the Republican primary in 1946, the paper challenged his right to run while serving as a circuit court judge, and revealed that he gave his friends "quickie" divorces. The paper even exposed the vital support McCarthy received from Communists, who opposed La Follette's renomination, and revealed his various tax problems. It was no wonder that three months before the famous 1950 speech in Wheeling, W.Va., that would launch "McCarthyism," McCarthy denounced The Capital Times -- which he called the "Madison Daily Worker" -- for allegedly following the Communist line right to the last period.[7]
Mr. Evjue was a feisty second-generation Norwegian-American from the Lincoln County lumber town of Merrill. After eye trouble caused him to leave the university after a year, he had a series of newspaper jobs in Milwaukee and Chicago before returning to Madison as business manager for the Wisconsin State Journal under its new editor and publisher Richard Lloyd Jones, son of the fiery Unitarian minister Jenkin Lloyd Jones and admiring cousin of Frank Lloyd Wright. Evjue and Lloyd Jones were both strong "Fighting Bob" La Follette progressives, and when Lloyd Jones bought the paper from Amos Wilder (playwright Thornton's father) in 1911, La Follette, then a U.S. senator, helped arrange the financing for what was then the aggressively progressive State Journal.[7]
The Cap Times, which had dropped to 16,000-plus in circulation for a high of 47,000 decades ago, hasn't gone off print completely: a free weekly "journal" with news and opinion and77 Square, an entertainment guide, will be inserted inThe Wisconsin State Journal. The morning paper has a circulation of 104,000, built in no small part of former Cap Times subscribers?those who trickled in over the years and those inherited in the switch.[6] The subscribers to The Cap Times reliably moved to The State Journal, a less progressive paper with the morning slot. In its account of The Capital Times's last daily press run, The State Journal reported that it had "succeeded in garnering most of The Capital Times's former subscribers and will see its average daily circulation rise from 89,000 to at least 104,000 starting Monday."[2]
Capital Times. After printing its last daily issue this weekend, the Capital Times is now switching over to a weekly tabloid format. After cutting a large part of their staff, the folks at the Cap Times want to focus their energies towards online content. Whether you enjoyed their progressive politics or not, it's sad to see a part of this Madison tradition close its doors after 90 years. I guess it's just a sign of the times. In cities with two daily newspapers, those printed in the afternoon are facing trouble throughout the nation.[9] For one daily newspaper in Wisconsin, the time is now. The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin shut down its print operations, fired a third of its staff, and completely restructured its business to focus exclusively online. The 90-year-old daily newspaper is one of the first such daily newspapers to make this drastic decision, but felt the affects of the dying industry twice as much being the afternoon paper in a two-newspaper town.[8]
Editor Paul Fanlund said national media like Editor & Publisher magazine and the Chicago Tribune have focused more on the newspaper 's attempt to build a bridge to the future through the Internet. Local reaction has focused more on the loss of the daily newspaper, he said. To become a "CNN.com for Madison," The Capital Times will have reporters posting breaking news items to its Web site seven days a week, 18 hours a day, Fanlund said. The Web site will also be hiring a staff member to improve its visual and audio content, he said.[3]
The liberal afternoon newspaper still has a sympathetic audience in Madison, but the changing pace of news is more important. "The political activism is there, you can't deny it," he said of Madison's newspaper readers, "but they want the morning box scores." While Mr. Fanlund takes pain to stress the need to continue the progressive editorials and watchdog role of the reinvented Capital Times, it is sports that serves as a perfect example of the changes he says have been long overdue. As an afternoon paper that did not publish on Sundays, he says, his sportswriters would be covering a college football game and "it would be 48 hours until the articles would be read." Those writers, who will be making the transition online, "see the Web as a new lease on life."[2] Wis. newspaper, moving to Web, prints final daily today Boston Globe MADISON, Wis. - The Capital Times, the feisty afternoon newspaper that helped define this city and championed a unique brand of Midwestern progressivism, publishes its final daily today after a colorful 90-year history.[1]
The final editorial of the print daily pledged itself to Mr. Evjue's purpose as "an independent voice for peace and economic and social justice that speaks truth to power each and every day." The editorial evoked him to give his endorsement of the steps the newspaper is taking: "He would caution us not to worry about the form The Capital Times takes, but rather to be concerned with the content and character of our message." And, in its final words, to its final audience, wrote: "All will be well."[2] "One of the tragedies of our time is the trend toward the one-newspaper city," Evjue wrote in an editorial explaining how the consolidation preserved editorial independence. "It is needless to tell the readers of The Capital Times that we are taking this step because it presents an opportunity to make The Capital Times a stronger and better newspaper than ever. We pledge to our readers that the militant and crusading tradition built up by this newspaper in the last 30 years will be maintained." It was this unique profit-sharing arrangement that ensured The Capital Times's continuing publication, even during later years of declining circulation in the afternoon field.[7]
No newspaper since the Civil War has been more a product of its times than The Capital Times. Nor has any paper ever reflected its founder more. It was about 10 degrees, with light flurries, when William T. Evjue published the first edition of The Capital Times in a converted ice cream parlor at 106 King St. on Dec. 13, 1917. It was not an easy birth.[7] When William T. Evjue started The Capital Times in 1917, the United States was engaged in a distant war that wise Americans knew was not our fight.[10]
Capital Times newspaper, Sept. 1961 William T. Evjue pushes the button on the press.[7] In 2005, the foundation pledged 1 million to endow the William T. Evjue Centennial Chair in Journalism at the University of Wisconsin -- the same university that once refused to provide interns to the fledgling Capital Times.[7]
Friday was the final day for about 20 journalists at The Capital Times, where the newsroom is shrinking from about 64 to 44 positions, publisher Clayton Frink said. Another roughly 20 positions are being cut in the printing and distribution areas of Capital Newspapers, the publishing company of The Capital Times and the Wisconsin State Journal.[3] The Capital Times will operate a nearly continuous Web newsroom and focus on repurposing online the cultural and entertainment material the staff will begin to produce in the supplement, 77 Square, to be inserted in The State Journal.[2] I think that in recent years the Wisconsin State Journal has started to move further to the left on certain issues. The Times has had to move even further to the left to maintain its unique, liberal voice. As a consequence, I think some of its editorials and opinion columns have been a little too far out there for most readers. I wish the staff of the Times good luck as they try to make the switch to online content. This is further proof that we as journalism students need to be prepared for whatever the industry throws at us.[9] "There are no openings on the staff at present, and you are no doubt aware of the job situation everywhere." His reference was to a fiercely competitive newspaper job market born of Watergate-era enthusiasm for challenging authority and playing the watchdog role of the press. His invitation to come "chat at some length" was a promising signal, and I interviewed in the building at 115 S. Carroll just off the Capitol Square that no longer stands. It would be years and two jobs later before I actually joined a Madison daily, and it was the State Journal instead. Those were heady times in the newspaper business.[4]
The transition in Madison, while long foretold - The Capital Times was doubly part of a dying breed, being the afternoon paper in a two-newspaper town - has hardly been neat and clean and cathartic. More than 20 members of the newsroom staff lost their jobs, mainly through buyouts, but also through layoffs.[2] As the Web and television have siphoned off a lot of the urgent news of the day, however, afternoon papers have ceased to be as compelling. About a third of the 60-person staff at the Capital Times have lost their jobs, with some new hires in the Web publishing area.[5]
Hunter's story drew the attention of then President Harry Truman and The Capital Times' crusade against Joe McCarthy soon became known nationally. Although post-World War II America was still a time when folks started their day early and read the paper after work, head-to-head competition in the afternoon wasn't proving profitable enough for the two papers.[7]
Madison journalism was changed forever -- and The Capital Times' fate was sealed. Sharing one press, the papers assumed they couldn't both come out in the afternoon.[7] Senator Fred Risser, a Madison Democrat who has been in the Legislature since 1956 and has read the paper even longer, said the Times "has kept Madison as liberal and progressive as it is." That tradition won't end with the final daily paper, said John Nichols, a prominent Capital Times columnist who also covers politics for The Nation magazine. "As tough as this transition is, it's about the future," he said.[1] Within a month, the Madison Tailors Union declared The Capital Times "the first daily paper to recognize labor as a factor worthy of consideration in building the city."[7]
The Carpenters Local 314 (the city's largest union), Federated Trades Council, and the Electrical Workers Union soon followed suit, and The Capital Times identity as the workers' paper was set. Evjue raised money to keep the paper afloat by traveling the countryside, selling stock for a dollar to area farmers and small businessmen -- Stoughton, with its Norwegians, was a bulwark -- soliciting support from like-minded progressives (including a 2,000 loan from bank president and former state treasurer Sol Levitan to buy newsprint).[7]
The Capital Times transition even drew some regrets from an unexpected corner -- a spokesman for a state business lobby who has merrily criticized the paper over the years for its liberal positions.[3]
The Capital Times in 1968 was the first in the country to endorse Sen. Eugene McCarthy for president against incumbent Lyndon Johnson. On environmentalism, The Capital Times unleashed a national-league talent, Madison native Whitney Gould, and let her carve out a new beat exposing polluters and raising conservation and preservation issues. She even exposed MNI's photoengraving operation as the source of nitric acid poisoning of fish in Lake Monona -- and the paper played her story prominently. Gould won both a Nieman Fellowship and Congressional Fellowship in 1973 as her reputation grew.[7] On gay rights, The Capital Times was the first to take front-page notice of the new movement, which was organized locally just four months after the June 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York City.[7]
In the Madison weekly Isthmus, one columnist wrote that the new Capital Times suddenly looked like a rival going after the same "urban advertising market that Isthmus has cultivated for 32 years."[2] Depending on your definition of the term "major newspaper," there have been several over the past six months, including the Cincinnati Post. Now we have another: the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin said Saturday that it was closing its doors as a print publication and will be publishing only on the Internet.[5] Our purpose is Evjue's purpose: We want to ensure that Madison, Dane County and Wisconsin have an independent voice for peace and economic and social justice that speaks truth to power each and every day. He would caution us not to worry about the form The Capital Times takes, but rather to be concerned with the content and character of our message.[10]
When The Capital Times circulation hit 10,000 on Lincoln's Birthday in 1919, La Follette saw a clear connection. "My dear Billy," he wrote Evjue, "in its field the Times is a daily proclamation of emancipation."[7] John Nichols, the excellent Cap/Nation journalist, is convinced that the web format will work, if not thrive. It will be easy for those of us who prefer reading papers online, but folks like my brother, a devoted Cap Times subscriber, is loathe to get his news fix staring at a computer screen. Perhaps it's just generational. I hope the Times thrives; it's a fine progessive institution carrying on the Wisconsin tradition of Fightng Bob La Follette.[5] Mr. Evjue died in June 1970. With a new management team in place -- his successors were Miles McMillin, Elliott Maraniss and Dave Zweifel -- the 1970s saw The Cap Times at the forefront of the three great social and political issues of the decade: environmentalism, women's rights and gay rights. After a difficult period during the '60s when the Cap Times vehemently opposed both the war in Vietnam and the more radical protests against it -- McMillin called for the National Guard to come to campus in October 1967 -- the paper and the zeitgeist were again fully aligned.[7] Despite the frantic finances, the paper's impact was immediate and powerful. Within a month, The Cap Times had printed five years of state income tax returns showing that most of the east side manufacturing plants run by Liberty Leaguers and the Council of Defense had their profits double even during the lead-up to war.[7] Long before I joined the Cap Times, friends would ask me about the city's distinctive afternoon paper, since I was associated with the company in one form or another for many years.[4]
"The reason the online version of the Cap Times may have life is that opportunity." Once upon a time, the afternoon newspaper was the Internet of its day, Mr. Baughman said, giving afternoon baseball scores and stock market reports in a quick turnaround. It was the more lucrative slot as a result.[2] Rather than continue the fade into print oblivion, the 90-year-oldCapital Timesis trying something as radical as its beginnings?a complete switch to online for its daily newspaper. The Madison, Wis., afternoon newspaper, founded by William T. Evjue, published its last print edition Saturday, becoming, as its print editorial declared, "a daily newspaper of the sort Americans will know in the 21st century."[6] Fittingly, the foundation also has been a boon to various journalistic enterprises, including the Simpson Street Free Press, scholarships for minority journalists, Ed Garvey's Fighting Bob Web site, and Fighting Bobfest, an annual chautauqua to rally progressives, held on the Sauk County fairgrounds. As William T. Evjue's newspaper steps into the future today with a continually updated Web site of local news, opinion and features, his newspaper and The Evjue Foundation will continue to shape Madison along the lines of Evjue's progressive ideals.[7]
To date, The Evjue Foundation has contributed more than 30 million to local organizations and the University of Wisconsin, including a recent 1 million gift for a new press box for Camp Randall Stadium.[7]
Madison is incredibly lucky, I would always say, to have two editorial voices, including a locally owned one that contributes so generously to the community year after year through the financial charity of The Evjue Foundation and the journalism and opinion leadership of a long line of outstanding editors -- Bill Evjue, Miles McMillin, Elliot Maraniss and Dave Zweifel, passionate and classic personalities all. [4] "I had to come to grips with this," said editor emeritus Dave Zweifel, who knew Evjue and who has helped produce the daily paper for 46 years. "This was something that if we wanted to keep Evjue 's voice and vision alive, this was a necessary step and one he probably would have taken."[3]
For some longtime readers, however, the loss of the daily print edition is as palpable as the pages of the afternoon sports or news pages. "It 's quite a calamity, " said Harold Tarkow, 95, a retired chemist who has read the paper since starting college in 1930 and usually voted for whomever it endorsed. "They had good writers. They had good editors.[3] Instead of printing on paper for distribution each afternoon, we will produce a Web-based daily newspaper that will be accessed for free on the Internet at www.captimes.com.[10] Starting tomorrow, The Capital Times will be a daily newspaper of the sort Americans will know in the 21st century.[10] "We felt our audience was shrinking so that we were not relevant," Clayton Frink, the publisher of The Capital Times, said in an interview two days before the final daily press run.[2] Masons preferred." It was The Capital Times four days later that revealed the ad was placed by the Klan. It was The Capital Times that revealed the following fall that 800 men had joined the Loyal Business Men's Society, the Klan's recruiting front.[7] Powerful elites were promoting political and economic agreements that threatened the sovereignty, the freedom and the economic stability of the U.S. and its trading partners. The Capital Times rejected the wrongheaded politics of its day and stood, unswervingly, for peace and economic and social justice.[10]
National media have focused on the move because The Capital Times is a prominent newspaper making the move to publish primarily online.[3] I'm not familiar with the Capital Times myself, but as a fellow newspaper journalist, I hope it survives and prospers online.[5]
Assuming a similar fate is eventually in store for the rest of the nation's dailies and national papers, The Capital Times transition will be an interesting one to follow.[8] Capital Times circulation had peaked in 1966 at 47,000 copies and circulation remained strong into the 1970s. As they say, that was then.[4] When a clothing store did big business after a Capital Times story, the advertising boycott fizzled.[7]
The Cap Times and the State Journal actually jointly own portal Madison.com as part of the operating agreement, so the branding is not as clear as it would be in other situations. [6] Unfortunately for the paper, the groups most active in cracking down were the Ku Klux Klan and its UW Klan fraternity. Unfortunately for the Klan, Evjue didn't care that they were on the same side against bootleggers. They were motivated by hatred for immigrants and Catholics. He took them on. It was the State Journal that on Aug. 26, 1921, published the first help-wanted ad for "Fraternal Organizers," particularly "100 percent Americans.[7] I had spent 22 years as a reporter and editor for the State Journal, followed by five years overseeing company operations in production, circulation and other areas.[4]
While acknowledging the long, proud print tradition there, the columnist, Marc Eisen, wrote: "Cap Times editors and reporters see themselves as reimagining founder Bill Evjue's progressive vision for the Internet age. [2] "The First Amendment gives people the right to be wrong and the Cap Times is frequently wrong," Pugh said.[3] A general strike loomed as The Cap Times and the workers cheered each other on, but the employers finally broke the strike and the Machinists Union.[7]
The self-described champion of the little guy isn't ready to quit. Next week, the paper starts publishing two weekly tabloids and transitions its daily coverage to the Internet with a smaller staff in a first-of-its-kind move being watched closely in the industry. [1] Madison was at war. His paper survived and its history and that of Madison have been intertwined for more than 90 years. They will continue to be intertwined, after today, as the paper forges into the digital future -- with all-day service on the Internet and two weekly printed editions.[7]
On the paper's two-week anniversary, another seminal event occurred -- the Madison Club expelled La Follette for "unpatriotic conduct and of giving aid and comfort to the enemy."[7] Evjue gleefully reported that Gisholt Machine, whose executives Carl and Hobart Johnson were behind the ouster of La Follette from the Madison Club, had net earnings in 1916 of 2,378,884.[7]
Representing a state and city with heavy German influence, La Follette was already under suspicion for fighting most of Woodrow Wilson's national security measures. Then he filibustered against arming merchant ships, and finally voted against the U.S. declaration of war with Germany in April 1917.[7]
With print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions. [2] With declining circulation numbers and revenues, the print newspaper industry has for all accounts and purposes seen its best days fall behind them. Online revenues are on the rise, which leaves many of us left wondering when the newspapers will simply call it quits and shift their focus entirely online.[8]
Jim Pugh, who covered City Hall for the newspaper in the late 1980s before becoming a spokesman for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, said the end of two daily print newspapers with distinctive voices in the city was a "sad day[3]
Over the past couple of years, as the U.S. newspaper industry has watched advertising rates and subscription rates dwindle, there have been a number of predictions that a "major" newspaper would eventually cease print publication and move exclusively to the Web.[5] The newsroom staff has been cut by 20 or so to about 40, including new hires in web production?the site was redesigned in conjunction with the print closure.[6] Functionally, the new editions are all about the advertising." Mr. Evjue is the old-world figure at the paper, the John Henry, of sorts, whose hammer - his typewriter - the staff still hears. The final paper showed him in a 1961 photograph pressing the button on new presses, embracing technological change.[2]
Each departing journalist was profiled in the final paper, and lives on at the Web site Madison.com under the headline "A Fond Farewell to Talented Colleagues," with a "class photo" taken next to the presses.[2]
The afternoon newspaper, which began publishing on Dec. 13, 1917, faced, like other papers around the country, the challenge of declining circulation that had dipped to 16,500 from a height of about 47,000 four decades ago.[3] Before the Internet came along (or television news, for that matter), the afternoon newspaper was the most current news available, and afternoon publishing was seen as a better alternative to morning newspapers.[5]
Labor rights were part of the progressive creed, but so was prohibitionism; the brewing companies of Wisconsin bankrolled the opposition to giving women the right to vote. Just as Evjue had been a zealous prohibitionist legislator, so he now championed a firm hand in stamping out bootlegging in what was known as Madison's Greenbush Addition, a neglected but tight-knit neighborhood of Italian immigrant laborers, African Americans and Jews. [7] "Time to send somebody to jail!" Evjue thundered in a front-page editorial denouncing bootleggers in November 1922.[7]
SOURCES
1. Wis. newspaper, moving to Web, prints final daily today - The Boston Globe
2. Reluctantly, a Daily Stops Its Presses, Living Online - New York Times
3. WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL
4. opinion
5. globeandmail.com: Ingram 2.0 - U.S. paper closes, moves online
6. Wisconsin's Capital Times Drops Daily Print Edition For Online; '21st Century Paper' - washingtonpost.com
7. news
8. Daily Newspaper Shuts Down Print Operations, Shifts Exclusively to Online Publication | Cleveland Leader
9. Madison Commons
10. opinion
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