It was 20 years ago today.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: UP FRONT

As my son, the publisher, wrote in this space last month, BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA has embarked upon its 25th year and will celebrate its silver anniversary next October. This December marks another milestone, for me at least: 20 years I've been working here. Looking back, this 20 went a lot faster than the one before it, but maybe that's just how it feels to be 56. I don't want to think about the next 20. Haste makes waste keeps springing to mind.

Despite the span of two decades and all the changes it has brought, one thing has stayed constant, and that's this magazine--not what it looks like or how it's produced or the business climate of the state it covers, but how, and why, we do what we do. In his piece for the magazine's 15th anniversary nearly 10 years ago, Wake Forest journalism professor and longtime New York Timesman Wayne King described the last cover story Whit Shaw--BNC's founder--wrote for it, back in the summer of 1986.

"Strictly speaking, the profile of C.D. Spangler Jr., the businessman-turned-UNC president, was an education story. But that dramatized what had by now become a key tenet of the magazine's editorial algorithm: the broadest possible definition of 'business story.' Too, the piece told the university's story by telling the story of a human being instead of subordinating flesh and blood to bricks and mortar or dollars and cents, though the unmistakable odor...