50 years and counting

It hasn’t been easy or always pretty, but Isthmus has stared down the headwinds

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Isthmus Cover Stories

The Dangle, a strip club and bar off the Capitol Square, closed Sunday afternoons so owners Al and Tom Reichenberger let Vince O’Hern, a bartender at the time, use it for a private gathering. O’Hern and Fred Milverstedt had recently agreed to go in together on a new weekly paper and they wanted to pitch the idea to potential advertisers in the entertainment business.

The late Marsh Shapiro, a popular local broadcaster and founder of the Nitty Gritty, was there, O’Hern recalls, as was Ricardo Gonzalez, who had recently opened the Cardinal Bar on East Wilson Street. The new publishers were looking for people to sign multi-week advertising contracts.

Gonzalez doesn’t remember much about the meeting, but is clear about one thing: “The Cardinal was an advertiser in Isthmus from the beginning.”

“To me it was a perfect fit,” adds Gonzalez, a native of Cuba who turned the Cardinal into a hot spot for Latin music and disco dancing and a hangout for local politicos. “The Cardinal was a bar and nightclub and Isthmus was the newspaper that was going to serve the entertainment community.”

Before bartending at the Dangle, O’Hern, a journalism major from Northwestern and western Pennsylvania native, worked as a Peace Corps recruiter in Madison. He landed in the city after his own two-year Peace Corps stint in Liberia. He once wrote it was an experience that would influence “every aspect” of his life.

While tending bar and driving a cab, O’Hern was also dreaming about starting a new kind of newspaper. The Vietnam War was over and the counterculture — its politics, its fashion, its rebellious attitude — was thriving, but O’Hern thought that the mainstream media was missing the boat.

“The high-collar guys on TV didn’t really get what the counterculture was,” he says. “I thought a more honest representation of the counterculture was needed.”

Musician Ben Sidran and his wife, Judy, were among those who encouraged O’Hern to take the plunge. Around this time Milverstedt, a Madison native and talented writer who frequented the Dangle, left the Capital Times after sparring with his editor. O’Hern invited him on as his partner. They borrowed money from their parents and each kicked in $1,000 for their new venture.

The first issue of Isthmus, published April 9, 1976, also marked the launch of Making the Paper, the column that appeared at the beginning of each edition. In the first couple of years Milverstedt and O’Hern would take turns penning the weekly column and there was no byline.

The co-founders shared some early reactions to the paper’s launch in the third issue, April 23. “The first time we made the paper, some people were impressed. Some others, however, who preferred a conservative approach, were more sparing with their plaudits. One careful observer, a man with some tabloid experience of his own, was downright challenging. ‘It shows promise,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but anybody can put out one issue.’

“Anybody? Well, almost anybody.”

James Danky, the former newspapers and periodicals librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and an expert on the alternative press, confirms that Isthmus debuted at a time when publishing became much more accessible due to the “revolution in offset printing” that happened in the 1960s and 1970s.

“It made printing and design available to everyone,” he says.

Another factor in Isthmus’ favor, says Danky, was that the weekly was free. Many of the alternative and underground papers that preceded Isthmus charged at least a nominal fee. “It doesn’t take much to deter people,” Danky notes.

The co-founders wrote in the first issue that the purpose of the paper was to report and reflect on “the ins and outs of Madison entertainment. We define entertainment broadly — everything that people in this city do to amuse themselves and raise a little hell.”

Local journalist and Madison historian Stu Levitan notes that a number of other “legacy institutions” were founded around the same time as Isthmus, including WORT-FM, Union Cab, Common Wealth Development and the Willy Street Co-op. “All these innovative, community-based things are happening at the same time and they are all a reflection of each other,” says Levitan, an Isthmus contributor and author of Madison in the Sixties as well as an upcoming volume that will cover the city from 1932-1979.

Also, some of the counterculture hippies were becoming young professionals, Levitan adds. And they had friends in high places.

“You’ve got [Mayor Paul] Soglin in office, you’ve got a solid liberal city council, WORT is on the air, it’s clear that the Democrats could win the presidency, there’s a liberal Democratic governor, the Democrats have solid majorities in the state Legislature,” says Levitan. “For Isthmus and its readers, it’s the golden age because we and our friends were in power.”

O’Hern initially worked out of his apartment on the far southwest side and Milverstedt out of his Livingston Street apartment. The paper’s first office was on the second floor of the Washington Hotel, which would later be destroyed by fire.

Former staffer Joanne Weintraub, who went on to become the TV critic for the Milwaukee Journal, recalled Isthmus’ first digs in a piece she wrote on the paper’s 20th anniversary, in 1996. “Cold in winter, suffocating in summer, the floors perpetually in need of sweeping and the walls papered with the yellowing covers of bygone issues, the place would have required an upgrade to qualify as merely uncomfortable.”

In 1983, the paper moved to a windowless office at 14 W. Mifflin St. and in 1992 to 101 King St., with a direct view of the Capitol and doors that opened to the sidewalk. It was not unusual for people to walk in to share a story tip with editors or to buy an ad. One day, former Gov. Tommy Thompson showed up unannounced and joined the editorial meeting underway in the first floor conference room.

Though entertainment coverage first drove the paper, Isthmus quickly expanded its focus: “There was too much news in my blood,” says O’Hern.

Marc Eisen, as editor, and Bill Lueders, as news editor, were key to developing the paper’s reputation for in-depth, enterprise reporting that emphasized storytelling and good writing.

Milverstedt sold his share to O’Hern after a few years but continued to write occasionally for the paper. He died in 2025.

Reflecting on Milverstedt’s death, Eisen credited the co-founder with tapping talent that grounded the paper. “Fred pulled in a lot of the early writers and that was really the key,” said Eisen, who left the Janesville Gazette to write for Isthmus. “I had that much faith in the paper and the vision that Fred and Vince had.”

O’Hern says it was obvious from the start there was a market in Madison for an alternative weekly and opportunity to grow. Sales of both large display ads throughout the paper and classified ads (job listings, apartments for rent, personals) in the back, fueled Isthmus’ growth.

By the mid-1980s Isthmus had grown from a scrappy, eight-page weekly to a quarterfold tabloid, usually running between 40 and 52 pages. The calendar (see page 25) had become the go-to source for finding things to do in Madison, and the personals and classified ads drew curious readers even if they weren’t looking for a date or a job.

Talented graphic designers on staff laid out the paper, which, over the years, also relied on hundreds of freelance illustrators, photographers and writers.

For the 20th anniversary, the paper queried some “community notables” for their assessment of Isthmus. George Hesselberg, then a columnist with the Wisconsin State Journal, said it was “a little too smug” and the Capital Times’ John Nichols faulted it for failing to “establish bold editorial positions.” (O’Hern’s take was that the paper’s role was to inform and educate readers, not tell them what to think or how to vote.)

On the plus side, the late Bill Dixon, an attorney, said “Each issue represents the pulse of our community. Without Isthmus there would be no there there.”

In 1995 Isthmus debuted its website, dubbed thedailypage.com, and the popular forum, which, before the days of Reddit and Facebook, was a vibrant online community for members, winning some prestigious awards along the way.

From the mid-1990s through the next decade the paper hummed along. By 2005 there were about 40 full-time staff members — including five full-time staff writers — and about 50 active contributing writers, artists and photographers. The variety in the paper, with a print circulation of 61,000 copies, was vast: hard-hitting investigations, news stories, lifestyle and advice columns, essays, cartoons from local artists (Brian Strassburg and P.S. Mueller), essays, special sections and critical reviews of dance, music, movies and TV.

O’Hern recalls two particularly rough spots: the dot.com bust of the early 2000s and, more painful, the recession and implosion of the newspaper industry in 2008, when classified advertising moved to the internet. There were pay cuts, resignations, layoffs and the elimination of retirement benefits.

“We held on,” says O’Hern. “We made it through.”

In 2014 O’Hern sold the paper to Jeff Haupt and Craig Bartlett, who also ran Red Card, then an off-campus meal plan for students, and former NFL lineman Mark Tauscher. Haupt had run an Onion franchise in Boulder, Colorado, and was looking for a way to get back into publishing.

Once at the helm, Haupt says his goal was to “preserve all the great stuff Isthmus had, but freshen things up and grow ad revenues.”

“We leaned into the entertainment section,” he says. Haupt also directed a redesign of the paper and website, which was renamed isthmus.com.

In 2015 Isthmus moved to a third-floor office at 100 State St., conveniently located above Ian’s Pizza, which provided pizza for the new Isthmus Live Sessions, a series of free, mini-concerts by touring musicians held in the office and open to the community.

The paper hired a full-time videographer to help with editorial projects and sponsored content, including the popular Car to Table series, and social media manager Chelsey Dequaine-Jerabek, now the executive editor of Voice Media Group, helped raise the paper’s online profile.

Haupt and Bartlett also grew the paper’s events — begun decades ago under O’Hern to buttress advertising sales and connect with readers. Madison Margarita and Taco Fest debuted in 2017 and Isthmus took over Madison Craft Beer Week. Isthmus Beer and Cheese drew 6,000 people to the Alliant Energy Center in 2019, the last year Isthmus was a sponsor. But while other for-profit papers at the time were putting reader donation programs in place to help fund operations, Haupt didn’t feel comfortable asking for others to support what was then a privately owned paper.

COVID-19, in March 2020, proved a near-fatal blow. Advertising dried up as the city went into lockdown and Haupt says he had no choice but to lay off the staff and pause print. “I didn’t have the personal financial wealth to fund this through what seemed like impending doom.”

Some editorial staffers and freelancers continued to contribute content on a volunteer basis and Haupt put a reader donation program in place; Isthmus’ loyal readers started to contribute. A few months later, the co-owners agreed to support a transition to a nonprofit organization, ultimately transferring the intellectual property at no cost and nearly $40,000 in reader donation funds to the new nonprofit, when it became an official 501(c)(3). Isthmus returned to print as a monthly in August 2021.

Five years in and Isthmus is still here. The staff is small and employees wear many hats, but the paper has stayed true to its roots, providing coverage of the arts and the local community, offering opportunities for freelance writers and artists, training young journalists, and maintaining the most complete calendar of events in the city!

With the support of sponsors, donors and board of directors, the nonprofit has made great strides.

Revenue has grown every year and the organization was able in 2026 to offer health insurance to employees for the first time. Thanks in large part to the vision and direction of board member Jason Stephens, chief executive officer of Thompson Investment Management Inc., Isthmus now also has an endowment in place to ensure that the paper lives on for another 50 years. As the paper’s longtime motto goes, To the Death!