I discovered my love for the new media in Spokane. Even though I only spent two days with the Spokesman Review newspaper in Spokane, it made the most impression on me as far as doing journalism on the web is concern. This “spokesman review” is maximizing the potential of the Internet to stay in touch with her readers. I spend a day and half in Spokane interacting with reporters and editors. I sat through one of their daily editorial meetings which are screened live on the papers website, as part of its transparent newsroom project. The objective is to let the public know what the paper plans to work on for the next day. The idea is for them to make suggestions if any to these stories. Residents of Spokane can ask questions as to why a story was written in a particular way and also make suggestions or even report on issue themselves through their blogs.

This article was first published in a weekly staff newsletter of the Kettering Foundation. It describes my experience at forums held in Philadelphia as part of the work towards primaries for mayoral and city council elections. Even though the elections have been held, The Great Expectation Project is continuing with a civic-to-do list for the next mayor of Philadelphia. This is an interesting development for me, coming from an environment in newspapers that only report what has happened and do very little to set an agenda for public officials. This is an example of how a newspaper is setting agenda and creating space for citizens to dialogue.

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Residents of Philadelphia this week went to the primaries to elect a Democratic candidate for the mayor position as well as elect city councilors. These elections came after a highly intense process of engaging the candidates by residents and the media.

In December last year, the Philadelphia Inquirer under its “Great Expectation” project, organized a series of forums to find out what issues were going to take centre stage in the election primaries in the city. The residents identified violence and crime, education, jobs/economic development, taxes and housing.

Montana was my first trip out of the Dayton, so it made me a little nervous. Everybody kept telling me it’s so different from Dayton and yet nobody told me what to expect. I therefore assumed I was going into a cowboy zone. I arrived in Missoula safe and sound to a different environment but not a cowboy zone as I had anticipated, that was disappointing.

Missoula has large tracks of land, sparsely populated, but with a warm feeling. Right from the airport I felt welcomed to the town. Some folks I flew with were curious as to what business I had in Missoula. I guess they don’t receive many African visitors; one woman guessed right when she said I must be visiting the university of Montana, because it’s the only thing in the town, which attracts many foreign visitors. Well, she was right. I was there at the invitation of Denise Dowling, a broadcast journalism professor, who with her students are producing and hosting the “Footbridge Forum” on KBGA 89.9, a campus based FM station. The took the opportunity to see other media houses in Montana - the KPAX TV Station, the student-run radio station KBGA, and KUFM the public broadcaster.