The Isthmus, where I spent a year and a half having enormous post-collegiate fun writing about one of the greatest cities on earth, gives the book a nice review:

Founded in 1892 by a student miffed at the university’s lack of a journalism curriculum, the Cardinal began with the twin engines that would power it through the 20th century: financial and editorial independence from the university, plus a completely student-run, come-one-come-all workplace that had (and still has) staffers teaching each other in a real-life newsroom.

While this open structure afforded the paper the freedom to print whatever it wished, it also left it vulnerable to interlopers who got elected to the Cardinal board and began firing editors. Hantschel gives remarkably even-handed treatment to the nefarious forces that wished to see the paper muzzled, if not shut down, whether they are upstate legislators, anti-Semitic frat boys or those outraged at the paper’s defenses of “free love.”

A.