It seems like only yesterday — although I can feel the years — that The Capital City Hues began publishing in March 2006, almost a generation ago. With this issue, we complete 20 years of publishing after putting out about 520 issues of The Hues. That’s a whole lot of newspapers.

The Hues has always been a community-based newspaper. It’s the community that gives us our stories and reinforces the values that we have. It’s the feedback that we get from the community, mainly one person at a time, that sustains us. It’s not career ambitions or the hope to score big bucks that has kept us publishing all of these years. It’s knowing that we are still relevant to the community.

My elevator speech about the paper is that it is African American, Latine, Asian American and Euro-American owned, written and read. I give thanks to my partners, most of whom have been with the paper all 20 years.

I came up with the name Hues when I was driving around in November 2005. I had left my employment as editor of The Madison Times and I was toying with the idea of starting a publication of color that would be different from The Madison Times. And I thought about all of the places I had been and the people I had gotten to know over the years. And the name Hues popped into my head as a way of saying that although we are different colors and shades, we are all joined together and part of that great spectrum of humanity. It was one of the best ideas I ever had.

And I have to give praise and thanks to those who contributed to the paper and moved on. LaMarr Billups, who was special assistant to the UW Chancellor was one of the original partners. Juan José López was also an original partner. Both died before their time and we are grateful for the contributions that they made.