A JOURNEY with SPOONS-1
Media Visits and Cultural Tours

By Unurjargal Lkhanaa, from Mongolia

Folks, I know we've visited to many media houses and cultural cites since we came in the USA for last three weeks. You can see my spoons those I've collected every single place we've visited in so far. I'd like to note a small memory with my spoon collection for me to share my colleagues and students when I return to my country, Mongolia.

By the way, I have to tell that I am not a professional journalist but I am a scholar in media and gender studies. So every media visit was very fascinating for me, even honestly I haven't visited such much to the media houses in my country.
The first media visit was the WUAB TV. Clevelanders have been watching WUAB TV for almost 37 years since 1968. Its market size is 1.4 million households which makes Cleveland the 15th largest television market in the United States.

Then we went to the Call & Post, Cleveland's major African American

newspaper, was started in 1916. It is incredible, today the Call & Post has over 80000 readers in touch with their community. Its ads reach Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati as three of the top 25 African American markets in the United States. Before discovering the Call and Post, we started a tour of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on 12 July in Cleveland. I bought this fancy guitar shaped red spoon from there. The next day we headed to the Amish country where we had amazing talk with Lester Beachy, the author of the book 'Our Amish Values: Who we are and what we believe'. He shared their unique history in the Amish-Mennonite Heritage Center. There is a 270 foot circular mural which is called Behalt. It means 'to keep, hold and remember'. Taking photo is prohibited in there. Interestingly, when we there we received Tornado alarm and all were in the women's rest room for almost 30 minutes.      

After than we visited to the Budget which is a primary communication link among Amish worldwide. The Budget can be called a 19th century Facebook because the Budget does not paid journalists instead it uses hundreds of Amish volunteers who are called 'scribes' and share stories about everything in their community. That is why it is called Budget as a collection of items and stories. The editor in chief Keith Rathbun spent his all day for us and we had a great Amish dinner with Rotary club. These special second hand spoons are collected in Sugargreek. 

In Columbus, we also visited to Ohio Statehouse which is one of the oldest working statehouses in the United States. The Ohio Statehouse was completed in 1861 after 22 years of construction. The sweeping grand staircase of the Senate Building was modelled after the Paris Opera House. 

For the final visit this three days tour was The Columbus Dispatch, is located just opposite of the Ohio Statehouse. It launched in 1871 and they declare that The Columbus Dispatch is so much more than a daily newspaper, because it's dispatch.com - named the top newspaper website in the state in 2015 by both Associated Press Society of Ohio and the Press Club of Cleveland. They have several weekly and monthly magazines and own smart phone apps as well. We had a chance to observe its editorial meeting.

This is just first part of our cultural study tour in Cleveland, Amish Country and Columbus. Will continue of course with spoons ...