Heard a story on NPR today about St. Paul being in the spotlight for the Republican National Convention. The part of the story that stuck out to me was when Erin Dady, director of marketing for the City of St. Paul, made this assumption about the national media:
“I would guess a significant percentage of the 15,000 members of the media who are coming to town couldn’t even locate St. Paul on a map,” she says. “So, what better way to tell our story to the world than to have 15,000 members of the media here in town? It’s really priceless media attention.”
Maybe Dady has some research to back up that assumption (in which case, why not use the research instead of speculating?) or maybe she’s referring to the fact that national reporters seem unable to distinguish St. Paul and Minneapolis (though that has little to do with locating St. Paul on a map)—I don’t know. But however you spin it, it seems like a really dumb idea for the marketing director of St. Paul to insult the intelligence of 15,000 journalists who are about to descend on our city.