The Hub Weekly

The Hub was a weekly newspaper in Champaign, Illinois, publishing from April 2004 until October 2006. Founding Editor Lisa Meid (who parted ways with the paper in October 2005), along with Co-Publishers Jon "Cody" Sokolski and Carlos Nieto, reworked the former weekly The Paper into The Hub with the mission of strengthening the area's commitment to arts, culture and entertainment. The paper, originally published at 16 pages in length, grew to 32 pages in early 2005 and was home to contributors Chuck Koplinski (movie reviews), Heather Zydek, Zack Adcock, Linda Ballard, and others. It "went on hiatus" in September 2006, according to an official company memo, and has not returned.
The Hub was the last in a series of iterations of a non-University of Illinois affiliated alternative weeklies. Previous alternative weeklies included The Optimist, 1994-1995, The Octopus , published from 1995-2002, C-U Cityview , 2002-2003, and the aforementioned The Paper, which closed its doors in 2004. The Octopus was owned by Yesse! Communications for many years, then purchased by Saga Communications, a radio conglomerate. The Paper was privately owned.
The Hub's competitor, Buzz Weekly, a non-profit weekly newspaper published by the Illini Media Company, survives. The friendly rivalry between the two papers was best exemplified by a short-running "feud" between columnists Seth Fein and Don Gerard (current mayor of Champaign, Illinois) , ,

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