Bruce “Rudy” Martzke (BA’64), longtime USA Today sports media columnist and 1996 UW–Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication Distinguished Service Award winner, died on November 20, 2024 at the age of 82.
A sports journalism pioneer, Martzke authored a sports broadcast column for 23 years that heavily influenced broadcast executives, producers, announcers and fans alike during a time when newspaper sports sections paid little attention to the happenings of radio and television. Martzke’s critiques were essential to figuring out who was doing well and who needed to improve behind the mic and revolutionized how fans consumed sports media.
“Rudy Martzke was there at the beginning – the beginning of USA Today and the beginning of journalism’s focus on televised sports. Announcers and executives would covet his attention, bask in his compliments, and fear his occasionally stinging criticism,” said School of Journalism and Mass Communication emeritus professor James Hoyt, who befriended Martzke while attending the SJMC together. “I was so impressed that he developed his beat largely on his own and blazed a trail for dozens of others, all striving to be the next Rudy Martzke. Rudy was a proud Badger and his visits to campus and the Journalism School were always memorable.”
Martzke grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from the UW–Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 1964. He began his career at the East St. Louis Journal covering the city’s professional sports teams. Eventually he pivoted to public relations and became a publicist and director of operations for the American Baseball Associations’s Spirits of St. Louis. In Martzke soon returned to reporting and started his USA Today column when the newspaper launched in 1982. He retired from USA Today in 2005.
Martzke was generous with his expertise and his time, mentoring young people hoping to break into the business and working directly with announcers, producers and executives to help them improve their work.
“I met Rudy at the very beginning of my sports media career. From the start, when he found out I was a Wisconsin alum, he went out of his way to help me and guide me because he was a generation ahead of me,” said Greg Hughes (BA’86), SJMC alum and NBC Sports executive vice president for communications. “He cared very much about getting things right. He cared about being ahead of the game. But he especially cared about being a Wisconsin Badger and his heritage of being from Wisconsin and being an alumni.”
Martzke’s trailblazing column launched him into the upper echelons of the sports media world and he was well-respected across the industry.
“Rudy ascended to a place where the heads of all of the different networks on the sports side were on speed dial for him, and he was on speed dial for them. And same with the on-air announcers, the producers, and certainly all of the communications and PR people like me,” Hughes said. “He made a huge mark in the sports media world, and we’ll all miss him.”
Martzke’s legacy will live on far beyond the sports media industry. Despite his notoriety, Martzke always maintained a sense of humor and will be remembered by his friends and family for his fun-loving and witty personality.
“Rudy loved banter. He loved to laugh and trade barbs,” Hughes said. “He had a fun personality and enjoyed telling stories. He was just wired that way.”