This letter appeared in the Summer 2007 Mailhome Issue that was sent to all incoming freshmen and transfer students.
Welcome to the pages of The Badger Herald, America’s largest fully independent student newspaper.
Congratulations to all of you on your acceptance to the University of Wisconsin. Whether you realize it yet or not, you’re about to be fully immersed in one of this country’s greatest public universities — and in a college town with no rival.
Here at The Badger Herald we’ve been proud to serve the University of Wisconsin community with student journalism of the highest quality, since our founding in 1969. We are and always have been "fully" independent — our office is located off campus and we neither seek nor accept any funding from the university whatsoever. As such, all of our expenses are covered strictly by advertising revenue.
We are also an entirely student-run organization. Every person on staff, from our advertising representatives to our comics editor to the members of our Board of Directors, is, by rule, a current UW student.
We publish 16,000 newspapers a day, five days a week, throughout the academic year. Keep an eye out for our newspaper rack in the lobby of your residence hall, in most buildings on campus and at businesses and street corners in the campus area.
Before long, you’ll be settling in to your daily routine here, and it is our sincere hope that you’ll make us a part of it. If the past few years are any indication, there will be no shortage of news, sports and arts coverage worth catching up on — Madison is a hotbed for artists and musicians, more than a few of the Badger sports teams can claim to be among the best in the nation and the UW administration seems to have a knack for inserting itself into nationwide controversies.
In addition to providing you with the news that’s important, we want this to be your forum to discuss and sound off on the issues that are important to you. Wish we covered something that we didn’t? Think that guy who wrote the health care column doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Send me an e-mail at [email protected]. We love to hear from you, and, space permitting, we try to print any thoughtful feedback and user comments from our award-winning website, badgerherald.com, in the next day’s opinion section.
As always, thanks for reading, and best of luck this fall. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am.
Mike Gendall
Editor in Chief
