When the national media roll into town, there’s usually something big going on.
You know, Mount St. Helens blows and there suddenly are more TV trucks around than coffee shops.
Those big stories are no brainers for the media giants.
But how about those quirky, strange little stories? Remember the 30 something woman who pretended to be a high school kid here? Went to the prom and everything. How about the time The Columbian printed the lottery numbers before they were actually drawn? Yikers!
How does the national media get wind of these crazy little gems?
Well let’s answer that question by visiting a recent one that popped up here. And it has already gone national.
It revolves around what the heck we should be calling this great city we live in: Vancouver.
Let’s headline this “the name game.”
It all began in October.
A bunch of movers and shakers and politicians gathered together to try and figure out how to best market Vancouver.
In other words if New York City is known for Nathan hot dogs and that Big Apple thing, then what the heck are we known for?
We sent reporter Michael Andersen to cover the back and forth of this meeting and the next day we wrote a story.
The story identified all the confusion surrounding the name Vancouver including how that other Vancouver in B.C. is the big dog.
Hey, we hate that but it is what it is.
Somewhat curiously, when a few of us here read the story it had no discussion about the possibility of changing the name of our Vancouver to help avoid all this mess.
Michael said it actually was brought up at the meeting but folks were told, in no uncertain terms, the name change idea was off the table.
In other words “Don’t even think about it.”
We could see why a reporter might not include it then, but my reaction to the group taking it off the table was simple.
“Huh?”
Sure the name-change idea has been kicked around for years but this group was supposed to figure out how to market us. How do you not discuss the name?
So with all due respect to this gathering of problem solvers, we asked Michael to develop follow up stories. He did two. One explored the idea of changing our name to Fort Vancouver. We also looked at other cities that have “Fort” in its name. They ran in November.
Click here to see our story on other cities with Fort names
Enter the national media. The New York Times opted in after our story appeared. Then some guy who works on the NBC Today show sees the Times story. So the Today show is considering doing a piece on Vancouver versus Vancouver. And because the Winter Olympics is in the other Vancouver… perfect timing.
Especially since NBC is covering the Winter Olympics.
I have to admit I thought about all this after we ran a front page story this week saying the NBC Today show was considering doing a piece.
Our story accurately pointed out NBC came up with the story idea after reading the New York Times story.
But our story never connected the dots. Never said the whole dang thing actually began because of the small conversation we had here and the subsequent stories Michael did.
I guess we could use a little marketing advice as well!
Lou Brancaccio is The Columbian’s editor. Reach him at 360-735-4505 or lou.brancaccio@columbian.com.
