Hantschel, Allison. It Doesn't End with Us: The Story of the Daily Cardinal. Westminster, Md.: Heritage Books, 2007. 226 pp. $25. College newspapers are an admirable but distinct sub-species of journalism. On one hand, they exude cockiness, youthfulness, spirit, zeal, and often a courage lacking in what has come to be called the mainstream press. On the other hand, they tend to be unpredictable, often amateurish, and sometimes blatantly partisan in their whole approach to the task of covering their particular community - a college, in this case. So it is with the Daily Cardinal, as chronicled by Allison Hantschel. The backof-the-book blurb says she graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1996 and the Daily Cardinal in 1997. That would indicate that the Cardinal finds room for recent graduates, thus making it a semi-pro kind of editorial product. The first issue of the newspaper came off the presses of the Madison Democrat on the night of April 3, 1892, and it has been a campus fixture since that time. It is said to be the sixth college daily in the country. Hantschel's eighteen chapters purport to tell us how a college newspaper's fight for freedom changed its university, challenged journalism and influenced hundreds of lives. The degree to which she has established all of those claims is, however, uncertain. Although she writes well enough, the book is uneven by a number of measures. Readers are entitled to know that this reviewer earned his doctorate at Wisconsin and was in residence for the two turbulent years - 1968-1970 - leading up to the senseless killing of a graduate student in the early hours of an August morning, shortly after we embarked for Georgia. Our recollection of academic life as well as press performance and influence on a campus in wartime is a bit different, perhaps. There is no question, however, on some points. Several generations of students have committed time and talent to providing what they thought was good journalism for a great university. They have learned their trade on the fly, so to speak, smoothing off the rough edges of reportorial uncertainty by experience and the coaching of students only a year or two older. Time and time again, student editors and reporters brashly challenged authority at many levels, bringing down the renowned Harry Stuhldreher, the former Notre Dame quarterback, from his football coaching post and exposing secret contracts that favored members of the university's governing body. …