The Capital Times

About The Capital Times

The Capital Times — known to generations of readers as the Cap Times — is a progressive news organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, publishing daily online at captimes.com and in a weekly print tabloid. Founded in 1917 as an afternoon daily, it spent nine decades as Madison's feisty second newspaper before making national news in 2008, when it became one of the first prominent American dailies to abandon daily print and go digital-first. Today it serves Madison and Dane County with a small newsroom, a strong opinion voice, and a weekly print edition delivered with the Wisconsin State Journal.

History

The Capital Times began publishing as an afternoon daily on December 13, 1917, in direct competition with the Wisconsin State Journal. Its founder, William T. Evjue, had been the managing editor and business manager of the State Journal, a paper that long supported the progressive Republican Robert M. La Follette — "Fighting Bob" — whom Evjue regarded as a hero. When La Follette began publicly opposing American entry into World War I, the pro-war State Journal abandoned him. Evjue quit in the summer of 1917 and started his own paper to carry the progressive banner, adopting the motto "Wisconsin's Progressive Newspaper," which the paper still uses.

The early years were a battle. Rumors that the new paper was pro-German — a smear born of Evjue's support for the anti-war La Follette — triggered an advertising boycott shortly after the first issue. Evjue answered by traveling to nearby communities selling one-dollar subscriptions door to door. By the summer of 1919 the paper's circulation had passed 10,000, the boycott collapsed, and the Capital Times was established as a permanent Madison institution. A Sunday edition followed in November 1927, and during the 1920s the paper co-owned the left-leaning magazine The Progressive with the La Follette family.

Fierce competition with the State Journal defined the next two decades, as the papers tried to out-scoop each other for readers and advertisers. By the late 1940s neither could afford to replace aging presses, and after tense negotiations, Lee Enterprises — owner of the State Journal — and Evjue's Capital Times Company formed Madison Newspapers, Inc. on November 15, 1948, a joint operating arrangement under which the two papers shared business operations while keeping separate newsrooms. The company, now called Capital Newspapers and doing business as Madison Media Partners, still operates today. On February 1, 1949, the State Journal moved from afternoons to mornings and became the partnership's Sunday paper; the Capital Times continued on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings.

Ownership and leadership

When William T. Evjue died in 1970, his controlling interest in The Capital Times Company passed to the Evjue Foundation, a charitable foundation he had established a few years earlier to support causes in the Dane County area. The bequest, initially valued at just $13,450, made the foundation the company's major shareholder, and the foundation has since donated more than $70 million to local organizations — an unusual ownership structure that has insulated the paper from the chain-ownership consolidation that swept the industry.

The Capital Times Company owns 50 percent of Capital Newspapers (Madison Media Partners); Lee Enterprises owns the other half. The Wisconsin State Journal is thus the paper's sister newspaper and business partner, even as the two maintain independent editorial voices. Paul Fanlund serves as editor and publisher, having joined the paper as executive editor in 2006 after 22 years in the State Journal newsroom. Dave Zweifel, who joined the paper in 1962 and served as editor from 1983 to 2008, is editor emeritus and still writes columns; longtime associate editor John Nichols is a nationally known progressive commentator, and Mark Treinen serves as editor. In 2026 the paper's eight-member newsroom sought to unionize, and management voluntarily recognized the union, which affiliated with the NewsGuild-CWA — a move widely seen as consistent with the paper's pro-labor heritage.

Editorial approach

The Cap Times has never been shy about its politics. From its first years it championed women's rights and was among the earliest American newspapers to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and, later, the anti-communist crusade of Wisconsin's own Senator Joseph McCarthy. When the North American Free Trade Agreement was proposed, the paper was one of only two in the United States to oppose it. Its editorials speak, in the paper's own telling, for "the little guy," and its opinion pages remain among the most forceful progressive voices in Midwestern journalism.

At the same time, the paper maintains a firm demarcation between its opinion operation and its newsroom: reporters and editors work independently of the editorial page, a separation the paper treats as a point of professional pride. The result is a hybrid identity — an unapologetically progressive editorial voice paired with straight news coverage of the capital city.

Coverage and regular sections

As the newspaper of Wisconsin's capital, the Cap Times covers state government and politics as a core beat, alongside Madison and Dane County news, business, education, food, arts and culture. Its opinion section — columns, editorials and guest voices — is the paper's signature, but the newsroom also produces enterprise reporting, investigations and daily coverage of the city and county. The paper has long punched above its weight in political commentary, with writers whose work circulates nationally, and its reporters cover the legislature, the governor's office and state agencies as a matter of daily routine.

Readership and circulation

The Capital Times' circulation peaked in 1966, when afternoon newspapers still dominated American cities; the subsequent decades brought the long decline that eventually claimed nearly all p.m. dailies. The weekly print tabloid's circulation was listed at 943 in 2022, but print is now a small part of the story: the paper's audience is overwhelmingly digital, drawn from Madison's highly educated, politically engaged population and from progressives across Wisconsin who read captimes.com. The print tabloid is delivered with the Wisconsin State Journal on Wednesdays and distributed free at newsstands and racks around Madison, keeping a physical presence in coffee shops, libraries and workplaces across the city.

Print edition and digital presence

On February 7, 2008, the paper announced it would publish its last daily edition on April 26, 2008, and reinvent itself as a primarily digital operation with a weekly print tabloid — a first-of-its-kind move by a prominent daily that drew national attention across the industry. The staff shrank over time from about 64 to roughly 20 positions. The weekly edition moved from the paper's long-time broadsheet format to a magazine-style tabloid designed for a different kind of reading.

For years the Cap Times shared the madison.com website with the State Journal, but in 2021 it left for a standalone site at captimes.com, citing branding confusion and differences in coverage between the two papers. Beyond the website, the paper has built a civic-events arm unusual for its size: Cap Times Talks, a monthly public-affairs discussion series launched in May 2015; the multi-day Cap Times Idea Fest, launched in fall 2017 and now an annual event; film critic Rob Thomas's post-screening chats in local theaters; Cooking with the Cap Times; the Cap Times Power Hour executive business series; and Cap Times Live, a virtual music series produced during the pandemic. The paper is active on social media and distributes newsletters to its digital readership, extending its journalism well beyond the printed page.

Challenges and outlook

The Cap Times' wager — that a small, digitally focused newsroom backed by a mission-driven foundation owner can sustain quality local journalism — remains a work in progress shared by newsrooms across the country. Advertising revenue has never fully recovered from the print collapse, and the paper competes for attention with national outlets, social platforms and nonprofit newsrooms. Its advantages are real, though: a distinct editorial identity in a crowded market, a loyal progressive readership, the financial shelter of the Evjue Foundation, and a civic-events business that deepens community ties. The 2026 union recognition suggests a newsroom investing in its own future rather than managing decline.

Awards and recognition

The paper marked its centennial in 2017 with community celebrations and the publication of "The Capital Times: A Proudly Radical Newspaper's Century-Long Fight for Justice and for Peace" by Dave Zweifel and John Nichols (Wisconsin Historical Society Press), a 319-page history of the paper's first hundred years. Its early stands against the Klan and McCarthyism are regularly cited in histories of the American press, and its 2008 digital-first pivot is studied as a landmark in the industry's transformation from print to digital.