Cardinal Alums--Short Bios of People You Knew When
Adam Lasker is DCAA Treasurer. Adam was Editor-in-Chief, 1998-99 and Photography Editor 1995-97. He runs a law practice concentrating in election law at the Law Offices of Adam Lasker in Chicago. His grandfather Robert G. Lewis was Cardinal Editor in chief, 1942; a cub reporter is due at the Lasker household in September.
Anthony Sansone is DCAA President. Tony was Cardinal Board Vice President, 1995-97, General Manager and initiator of the Cardinal Website, 1995-97 and Production Manager, 1990-91. He is now Senior Technical Writer at EMC Corporation and is pursuing a Masters in Technical Communication from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was a founder of DCAA and, with wife Allison Hantschel, also a Cardinal alum and board member, is the major force behind DCAA’s growth and success.
More Competition for the Cardinal
Hard as it may be to believe, there are those for whom the Badger Herald simply isn't right-wing enough.
Weary of what they describe as liberalism in the Madison media, conservative students at UW-Madison will roll out their own newspaper next semester.
On Feb. 12, the birth date of Republican President Abraham Lincoln, the Mendota Beacon will begin publishing every other week under the direction of junior economics major Tim Shea, who will be its managing editor. The paper will get start-up money from a conservative group known as The Leadership Institute, in Arlington, Va.
Shea described his decision to start the newspaper as an act of intellectual self-defense.
"There's definitely a lot of hostility toward the conservative way of thinking on campus," Shea said. "By putting out a newspaper, that's something that people can pick up and read, and they don't have to listen to people shooting down their views. They can just read the paper and then decide whether or not they agree with what we have to say."
Editors of UW-Madison's existing student newspapers, The Daily Cardinal and The Badger Herald, said they welcomed the competition. But they didn't accept Shea's description of their news pages as slanted.
"We personally do a fine job of presenting both sides of the issue," said Cristina Daglis, editor-in-chief of The Badger Herald, which itself was started more than 30 years ago as a conservative response to The Daily Cardinal.
"I get a little bit nervous about (any media outlet) that places a label of conservative or liberal on (itself). I would have a difficult time taking the news seriously."
Shea said his paper would offer five columnists and cover national news, health, technology, and local news with a twist he says is missing from other publications - an embrace of "conservative" topics. If College Republicans, for example, do something newsworthy, he said, such as visit military veterans in local hospitals, that story will get just as much ink as the other papers might give an anti-war rally.
"We think those stories have an equal right to be published and to have people read them," Shea said.
Shea also said there seemed to be "tremendous interest" in his newspaper, judging by the 50 or so responses to job ads in the first week. But Alexander Balistreri, editor-in-chief of the Daily Cardinal, said success would take more than that.
"I don't think it depends on the concept of the paper," Balistreri said. "The burden will be on the shoulders of those putting it out. If they do a good job, I think it can develop a successful niche on campus."
U.S. Supreme Court to Hear UW Student Fee Case This Fall
The case filed by three UW law students against the UW System Board of Regents will be heard by the high court. The suit states that students should not have to fund groups with which they do not agree.