Monday, March 03, 2008

With Reporters Around for Primary,
Times of London & The Economist
Offer Takes on How Cleveland Fares

With the tight and dramatic race for the Democratic presidential nomination attracting unprecedented interest from the global media, hundreds of reporters from around the world are competing for every scrap of information they can find to write about. With the attention recently having moved to tomorrow's Ohio primary, the hunt for scraps moved closer to home. Last week, two leading British-based publications published interesting looks at Cleveland. The Economist weighed in with a typically smart look at what the Cleveland Clinic's success means for the area's economy, comparing it with another extremely successful hospital, the Mayo Clinic in the Twin Cities. In the process, it made the interesting observation that as host to three million visitors each year, the hospital system is beginning to take on the characteristics of a hospitality organization. It also noted that when two major buildings are completed, the complex will be twice the size of the Pentagon. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, meanwhile, offered a bleak look at the subprime crisis's effect on Cleveland, likening it to the devastation Hurricane Katrina visited on New Orleans. Not a terribly original observation, of course, but then, Murdoch-owned media are not known for their originality.

4 Comments:

At 5:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for these links. The piece on the Clinic gave a positive feel for Cleveland, but the London article was just devastating. Not many years back, I toured the Slavic Village area with the
councilman and some things were looking up. Now it sounds as if it is not going tomake it with the foreclosures continuing.
--Roldo

 
At 6:55 AM, Blogger John Ettorre said...

Yes, that Times of London article was just full of bleakness and devastation. It seemed a little over the top at first, but I suppose it's valuable to learn what that neighborhood must look like to someone seeing it with fresh eyes. The thing that kept going through my mind, though, was this: since that's not even the most blighted Cleveland neighborhood, imagine what that reporter would have thought after a tour of the five hardest-hit areas.

 
At 11:54 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interestingly, we here at the Cleveland Foundation got a call from Al Jazeera English (the English arm of the Arabic Al Jazeera network, as you might assume). They had planned on being in Cleveland today to cover the Ohio primary and wanted one of our people to talk about the regional economy and why it's such a big issue with voters. At the last second, though, they switched their base of operations to Columbus, since I believe that's where Sen. Clinton is today. But the point is, even Al Jazeera, of all media outlets, is doing its version of the "Woe Is Ohio" story this primary season.

 
At 1:31 PM, Blogger John Ettorre said...

Very interesting addition to the point, Scott. Thanks for that wonderful tidbit, which certainly fleshes out the point in vivid fashion.

 

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