'A pen warmed up in hell' | Reality-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation.
3The funniest story in the stack is an item reporting that Glendale did not even recoup what it spent as host "city" for the Super Bowl. For years ahead of the spectacle, Phoenix media reported what an economic boon it would be. This is a classic example about how critical thinking is neither taught nor valued in today’s newsrooms (gee, why do we keep losing readers?).
A basic analysis of the hype would have shown that the promised economic benefits would be modest. It happened during high season, so resorts and hotels would already be booked. Indeed, considering the NFL demands blocks of rooms at a discount, the hotel industry probably made less money than it would have otherwise. Sales of souvenirs? Most of the profit goes back to the NFL. Restaurants would have similarly been packed anyway. And so on.
It’s not that the Super Bowl doesn’t bring benefits, in terms of exposure and the gathering of big deal makers. Too bad it took place in an amorphous place without an identity and a stadium in a cotton field on the metro fringe, in a place with little economy besides the great — now shuttered — housing factory. But the media shouldn’t have bought into the economic hype. Alas, the pressure is always extreme to "say something positive." Unfortunately, many reporters today would never even have applied the basic bullshit detector that was once a standard-issue item in their craft.
Read on for more of the Stack.
5When the New York Times wrote about the high-fliers coming to the Super Bowl, they didn’t fool around with the silly locution "the Valley." They wrote Phoenix, and Phoenix area.
Of course the local mantra is "Arizona’s Super Bowl." But Arizona is a big state, and that’s a little like saying the Super Bowl in Miami (it was also played in a suburban stadium) is "Florida’s Super Bowl." In other words, meaningless. Once again, the region will miss a great "branding opportunity" by continuing to deny itself the cool, distinctive name, Phoenix. It’s a world of competing cities, not geographies of nowhere (in Jim Kunstler’s apt phrase). But for Phoenix and "the Valley," it’s an old tale of self-destructiveness.
What’s less understood is why it happens.
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