As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included helping establish a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo.

My next noteworthy media effort was to edit and publish the “futurist” newsletter of the U.S. Club of Rome, a group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. So, noting a 1980s journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices), I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper.

Eventually the party went its way, and I converted the monthly to a journalistic experiment to see what happens when a small town has a paper with an intensely local focus that’s driven by global concerns. Over the years, the monthly grew, until it became a weekly in 1994.

I’ve remained as publisher of that paper, which continues to this day as Mountain Xpress. The paper’s mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving active, thoughtful readers.

Ultimately, Xpress is not a newspaper, but a media experiment to see how healthy and democratic a community can be if enhanced by strong, supportive media. Today’s rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how its highly interactive network approach can impact a community when coupled with locally focused media activity whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism.