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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a 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). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes

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4 thoughts on “New WNC magazine launches: “Capital at Play” will explore the spirit of enterprise

  1. Big Al

    Asheville “progressives” (socialists, leftists, communists, whatever…) will thoroughly enjoy the magazine’s unapologetic commentary on the value of free-market capitalsism unfettered by government regulation. The magazine also attacks the pending CAFE standards which demand higher fuel efficiency for American motor vehicles (at the cost of safety).

    Enjoy!!!

  2. Jeff

    Fifty thousand readers?? FIFTY? THOUSAND? If that is being promoted as anything less than a ten-year goal, I’d say this is magazine should be called Truth At Play.

    Are there more than 50,000 people in those counties with personal income over $35,000? And they say over half of those readers will be in the $60,000 – $250,000 range. Really? There are 25,000 people here pulling in $60,000 per year? I guess there’s a magical gated community who’s walls I haven’t peered over yet.

  3. Barry Summers

    Asheville “progressives” (socialists, leftists, communists, whatever…) will thoroughly enjoy the magazine’s unapologetic commentary on the value of free-market capitalsism (sic) unfettered by government regulation…

    …and other assorted fairy tales.

    Are you kidding us? Capitalism is dead. The obituary:

    “The biggest banks are 20 percent larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of our economy than ever. They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again, if necessary. Indeed, credit rating agencies incorporate future government bailouts into their assessments of the largest banks, exaggerating market distortions that provide them with an unfair advantage over smaller institutions, which continue to struggle.”

    This from Neil Barofsky, George W. Bush’s choice to oversee the TARP program. He wrote this upon his resignation in March of this year.

    Do you get it? The largest financial institutions have now publicly and unapologetic-ally changed their business practices in anticipation of being bailed out by the taxpayers, again. America is not operating under a Capitalist system, and it never truly has.

    Your “free-market capitalism unfettered by government regulation” is a fantasy, like “Star Trek” or “Atlas Shrugged”. But hey, if you have a good puzzles page, you may sell a few copies.

    Good luck.

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