Alysia Tate: New Era, fresh voices. (Building on a Legacy).

I got my first lesson on race in Chicago riding the train.

Though some of my Northwestern University classmates strongly discouraged me, I traveled from Evanston south to 87th Street. I watched, in disbelief, as the demographics of the passengers shifted from white to black.

In some ways, it was a reflection of my own life. I grew up in Denver with my mom, who spent her childhood in a small Kansas town in a family of white Republicans. My dad, an African American who grew up in the Jim Crow South, was never far away. But it wasn't until I came to Chicago that I really understood how much race matters.

Gone are the days, however, of the Council Wars, or the campaign ads that urged white Chicagoans to elect mayoral candidate Bernard Epton "before it's too late."

But issues of race still surround us. They affect us differently today than they did 30 years ago--or even 15 years ago. But as immigrants watch in fear while our government questions and detains hundreds, as black and Latino men continue to fill our jails and prisons, as thousands of families struggle with unemployment in the midst of welfare reform, exposing these issues seems more important now than ever.

We throw up our hands as we watch poor black families fight for public housing, not understanding why they would want to stay in their communities. We assume the Mexican workers who cook our food or mow our lawns have no interest in more training, or college. We defend our right to live in "nice" neighborhoods--where all the families happen to be white and middle class.

But rather than assign blame or dictate how to solve problems, The Chicago Reporter pursues a different strategy. We shed light. We raise questions. Our 30-year mission remains investigating, analyzing and documenting the ways issues of race and poverty affect us all.

So we'll keep evolving. Through our print and electronic editions, we will provide more timely, shorter stories about the people and organizations tackling these issues. We'll reach out to you and find out what you like best, and least, as we work to build our circulation and market our publication more widely.

But we won't lose our edge. We will remain, at the root, an investigative publication, dedicated to accuracy, breadth and clarity We will continue to give you news you can't find anyplace else.

That commitment, I think, pays the most fitting tribute to the Reporter's leaders, Laura Washington among them. I consider myself fortunate to succeed her in putting my own stamp on a fine publication.