WisBusiness.com
Beginning this spring, The Capital Timeswill dramatically enhance its Internet site, www.captimes.com
Publisher Clayton Frink said The Capital Times online site will feature increased volume, depth and timeliness of news, opinion and otherinformation. He said the printed edition of the newspaper will expand its distribution by about five times and switch from six-day publication to two weekly tabloid-size editions.
“The Capital Times has been a progressive media voice in Madison for 90 years, and this move allows us to preserve that legacy and, in fact, reach far more people than ever before,” Frink said.
Beginning April 30, the news and opinion edition of The Capital Times will be published on Wednesdays. It will be distributed with home delivered Wisconsin State Journal subscriptions throughout and just beyond Dane County and offered free throughout the Madison area in newspaper racks.
It will offer in-depth news and public affairs stories as well as the newspaper’s highly regarded opinion and commentary content, Frink said. The Capital Times will also produce a weekly arts, entertainment andculture section that will be distributed on Thursdays with the Wisconsin State Journal and offered free in newspaper racks in the Madison area.
It will replace the current Rhythm publication, which is co-produced with the State Journal and appears in both newspapers. With its new distribution, The Capital Times will have a circulation of more than 80,000. Current circulation is 17,072.
The date of final daily publication is April 25. The changes will result in a smaller workforce in The Capital Times newsroom and in other areas of Capital Newspapers though the size of the change has not been finalized. A voluntary separation program foremployees will be part of the transition.
Subscribers of The Capital Times will receive a letter in coming weekswith information about their account. It was also announced that Paul Fanlund will become editor of TheCapital Times, effective immediately, having been executive editor sinceAugust 2006.
“We believe our plan to combine an outstanding news andinformation web site with in-depth, magazine-style weekly tabloids is onthe mark for the future” Fanlund said.
“This move is vital to ensuringthe long-term relevance of the Cap Times.” Fanlund assumes the role in which Dave Zweifel has served since 1983.
The 67-year-old Zweifel announced he will assume the new title of editor emeritus. He will continue to write his regular columns for thenewspaper’s website and Wednesday edition and oversee the paper’sopinion content with Associate Editor John Nichols.
“Our founder, William T. Evjue, had to make many tough decisions toensure The Capital Times success through the years he ran thenewspaper,” Zweifel said.
“Just as he had to deal with the changingtechnology of his day, we’re making these changes to ensure that hisvision of Wisconsin progressivism and his insistence that a newspapermust champion truth and justice for all the people will continue farinto the future.”
As an afternoon newspaper, The Capital Times circulation had reached itspeak in 1966. Publishing for afternoon distribution was once a covetedposition in newspapering, but almost all p.m. newspapers in two-newspaper markets have disappeared over the past two decades.
The Capital Times was created in 1917 by the late William T. Evjue as aprogressive media voice and that tradition continues today. He founded the paper at the height of World War I and in the early years his newspaper survived several advertising boycotts to become the dominant paper in the Madison area.
In 1948, Evjue reached an agreement with Lee Enterprises, the owners ofthe Wisconsin State Journal, to form a new corporation that was then named Madison Newspapers, Inc.
Although the agreement combined the advertising, circulation and production departments of the newspapers,it ensured two completely independent newsrooms.
Because there was now just one press, The Capital Times elected to continue in the afternoonwhile the State Journal took the morning field and the Sunday newspaper. The Capital Times Co. and Lee Enterprises continue to each own 50 percent of what today is known as Capital Newspapers, which in addition to publishing The Capital Times and the Wisconsin State Journal, owns the Portage Daily Register, Baraboo News-Republic, Beaver Dam Citizen and several weeklies and shoppers in south central Wisconsin.
When Evjue died in 1970, his will directed that the William T. Evjue Charitable Trust hold his controlling stock in The Capital Times and that the proceeds be given to The Evjue Foundation, which he established several years before his death.
Today, the foundation annuallycontributes more than $2 million to local cultural, educational andnon-profit community projects and will continue to do so.
