USA Today Kick To The Gut In Photos

I thought it was remarkably generous. The idea that anyone would spend even $10 bucks on an ad campaign to try to convince anyone that Fresno is a "world-class" city is a ridiculous waste of money. It's one thing to try and convince people that Fresno isn't Western Applachia, it's quite another to insult people's intelligence by flat out lying. I've lived here all my life, even without the abominable air quality and chronic, double digit unemployment -- I can think of fifty better slogans (not all of them mentioning our affinity for Sarah Palin, tea parties, and general stupidity).

James: You are correct that we are a city with many challenges facing us. But in an article where the title is "Fresno rebrands itself but shuns labels" it is hard for me to see how the photos do anything bur feed the stereotypes of Fresno. You know as well as I that there are some really great things happening in our city right now and it is too bad none of that we really highlighted. I may be reading into this, but a shot of the Fresno sign, with a garbage truck? How could it get much worse than that as the largest photo in the entire piece? I found the article to talk minimally about Fresno working on changing its brand and more about the same stereotypical problems. But you are correct that we have serious problems in our city but a story about how we are working to address them would be equally newsworthy in my opinion. Just two weeks ago, Stanford University invited a group of Fresnan's to come to Stanford and talk about the great strides being made in our community related to jobs, human investment & community values. I just think that is newsworthy as well.

Hannah: Did you really hear from the photographer at USA Today? Can you share anything else about what he said. Really interesting...

My thinking is this: Yes, those skewed photographs fit perfectly with the tone and overall direction of the piece, but could W E (our local photographer) have submitted photos that showed some of our positives? I e-mailed Kurt and found that they (USA TODAY) assigned his coverage to be of images that would reflect the overall less satisfying perception the media has. I understand that our homeless/hungry percentages are disturbing, our drop out rate is alarming, unemployment is devastating, but we are doing positive things in our community. Could those for once be highlighted?! When you think of the great cities you know... don't be naive in thinking that they escaped homelessness, high school drop outs and a lack of jobs. They didn't, but they have pushed to iluminate the positive. Our first step in that is to convince the natives that our valley is on the verge of being everything they wish for. How do we expect visitors and any press to change their views if we do not first change our own.

Barry, could you provide a little commentary on what you feel is negative about these?
I haven't read the story yet, but painting over a city with nearly 40% food insecurity, 12+% unemployment, high rates of foreclosure, low rates of high school completion--I could keep going here, but again, painting over these wouldn't really be newsworthy.