The Daily Cardinal designs new look for fall

As you can imagine, all of these changes have made this particular fall especially taxing. The staff, however, is more than up to the challenge. We are all a little bit weary after a few late nights last week, but things seem to be getting easier with every passing day.

Campus response to our metamorphosis has been overwhelmingly positive, and staff members have said they see more people reading the Cardinal in lecture and around campus. Perhaps that is simply a function of our new and more conspicuous format (the Cardinal's traditional full-tabloid, or 11x17 size), but I don't think so. Our challenge now is to capitalize on this increased attention.

In recent history, The Badger Herald has been the larger of the two student papers, but we know we have been the better. A common frustration amongst staffers was that, no matter how much better our content was on any given day, the Herald would get more readers. With the success of the redesign, we feel more people will give us a chance and discover for themselves that beauty, at least at The Daily Cardinal, is more than skin-deep.

Of course, all of that depends on a consistently strong editorial product. While staffing has been a persistent problem in the first weeks, things seem to be improving as we convert interested recruits into contributing staff members. Beyond that, our coverage has been solid (which, it should be noted, is still consistently better that that of our chief competitor). The recent addition of a news editor who supervises the city, campus and science desks has been a great help, and is already starting to pay off in the assignment of more long-term and in-depth stories. Once some of these initial enterprise pieces start rolling in, there should be no question as to who the king of campus coverage is (though The Onion still scooped us on dolphins' development of opposable thumbs).

Bright spots in editorial content have included the launch of a food section; an improved opinion page with more editorial cartoons and staff editorials; a larger and more aggressive back page sports page; the continuation of our GameDay football programs; excellent photography and a flood of comic submissions.

All in all, I'd say it is an exciting time to work at the Cardinal. The attitude around the office is optimistic, and we have set our sights on regional and national awards. Here's to hoping this news year is half as eventful as the last one.

On the business side of the paper, things are still tight, though not as tight as they have been in the past. Advertisers seem to be responding well to the new ad sizes and rates, and we have recently reached an agreement with the student government that settles our debt to them. We also appreciate the generous support the alumni have given us in the form of new computer equipment. Every little bit helps.

Andrew Wallmeyer is the Editor in Chief of The Daily Cardinal for the 2000-2001 academic year. He can be reached at amwallme@students.wisc.edu .