Reflections/Jonathan Gramling
Completing 20 Years
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.
Two of our columnists also passed away. Lang Kenneth Haynes was one of our original columnists who brought his unique perspective on the world to each issue of The Hues. It broke my heart when he died. We have a template that we use when we begin to put together the next issue of The Hues. Ken’s logo was always a part of the template and it is still there. So every two weeks, I think about Ken.
The other is Wayne Strong whom I first got to know through different activities in South Madison, especially running the Southside Raiders youth football team for many years. One day, Wayne approached me about writing for the paper and I thought, ‘Why not?’ He wrote thoughtful columns for us for several years. After he left us, he sat on the editorial board of the Wisconsin State Journal for several years. We are proud that we gave Wayne his start.
Donna Parker was also an important columnist in our early years especially. Donna’s columns dealt with psychology on one level or another and I always enjoyed them. At times, I used them to check in on my own mental health. One day, Donna stopped writing and I’m not sure why. But I was grateful for her contributions to the paper. Again, another unique voice went missing.
Heidi Pascual, our managing editor for the first five years always called me “Community Property” because I was involved in so many different community groups and activities. When advertising began to transition from print to the Internet, Heidi saw the writing on the wall. She moved back to The Philippines where she still published Asian Wisconzine and has been The Hues’ webmaster.
When Heidi left, I basically did become community property and the property of The Hues for I basically absorbed most of Heidi’s duties so that we could survive the tail end of The Great Recession and the loss of classified advertising. And we survived and continued to publish because I could pay myself the same low salary no matter how much work I performed. It was all for the greater good and I got a lot of satisfaction out of that.
After Ty Glenn “retired” as our main distribution person for close to 15 years, my son Andrew took over delivering the paper and began to contribute a column. I like to feel that I gave Andrew good writing genes for he is an excellent writer.
People often ask me if Andrew will take over the paper after I retire. And I tell them that I heavily doubt that he would. While he is an excellent writer and has a lot of smarts,. His interests lie elsewhere and of course he is free to chose where he wants his life to go.
I think one of the most exciting periods of running The Hues was during Barack Obama’s presidential runs and his two terms as president. Barack was truly a grassroots organizing kind of person. And he made sure that small publications and other media of color like The Hues were included almost like equals. I would see other local media people of color at his events, people like the late Gaddi Ben Dam and Betty Banks and Jeanne Erickson.
I covered Obama over 20 times from the from his appearance in Milwaukee with Governor James Doyle in 2006 to the latter part of his second term. I even shook his hand once. It was a giddy and historical time that I will always cherish. And it was made possible by The Capital City Hues. And for that, I will be forever grateful!