The Daily Cardinal is published Thursdays during the academic year in a tabloid print format and maintains an independent website with fresh content each day.

During the early years of the paper, the founder of the university's journalism school, Willard G. Bleyer, was a reporter and editor as an undergraduate.

Disagreeing with a policy of mandatory military training for male undergraduates to prepare for the impending World War II and running a letter to the editor signed by Junior Women discussing free love led U.S. Senate nominee John B. Chapple to declare that the Cardinal was controlled by "Reds, Atheists and free love advocates".

In 1940, the Cardinal moved out of its office east of Memorial Union to a building on University Avenue, on the land where Vilas Communication Hall sits today.

The New York Times wrote on the occasion, "Despite annual changes in student staffs, a few college newspapers in the country have acquired a definite character.

In 1969, a group of conservative UW students, frustrated by the Cardinal’s unrelenting liberalism, founded The Badger Herald as a right-wing alternative.

Until recently, UW-Madison was one of few American universities with competing daily news publications, though starting in 2014 that competition largely shifted online with the Cardinal cutting Friday editions and the Herald publishing print issues once a week.

In 1995, the Cardinal was forced to stop printing due to financial issues, suffering a seven-month shutdown until the necessary funds were secured to return to publication.

In 2000, the Cardinal broke the story that university officials had digitally inserted a black student's face into a photograph of white Badger football fans.

[17] In November 2015, the Cardinal announced it would begin a new publication schedule by publishing two print issues per week while also moving to a new online platform, effective with the start of the spring semester.