Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

BIG CITY: What does it take to make it to the top?

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Staff

Kirk Ross
Regular readers may recall that I have a thing about the proliferation of top lists, specifically those put out by those “with it” news organizations that use them for a quick, cheap traffic boost, branding or both.

The technique, whether it’s Forbes, The Daily Beast or Modern Duvet, is pretty much the same: Establish a theme, assemble three or four criteria and call in the interns to dutifully pull some photos of the places that sort to the top along with a few fun facts from Wikipedia. Then watch the hits roll in as people link to the list on social-network sites and the towns’ public relations folks treat the information as if it’s a Harvard Business School case study.

“Hey, Ma! Modern Duvet says we’re best small town for floral comforters!”

At a press conference at Town Hall, Mayor Smith called the new study an important acknowledgement of the town’s growing prowess in housewares.

Top lists are generally such cheap journalism that poking holes in them – as I am now doing – is becoming its own form of cheap journalism.

Let’s take the most recent list from The Daily Beast, which named Durham the most tolerant city in the country, as an example.

To compile its tolerant city-themed list for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Beast looked at cities with a population of more than 250,000, using the number of reported hate crimes in 2010, the diversity of the population according to the census, the diversity of religious adherents, the number of same-sex couples and “state-wide statistics on the scope of anti-discrimination laws, attitudes regarding same-sex marriage, according to projections by Columbia University professors, and religious tolerance, based on a Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life survey.” Note the term “statewide.”

I could be wrong, but I think that means Durham is the most tolerant city in the U.S. based on a low number of reported hate crimes in 2010; a diverse population; a large number of same-sex couples; and progressive, tolerant attitudes professed throughout North Carolina, a state with a marriage discrimination amendment slated for this year’s ballot that is currently polling 60/40 in favor of passage.

Another thing that peeved me about The Daily Beast feature was that in the blurbs on each city, they did not break out the numbers of people of Hispanic origin. That would have underlined Durham’s diversity. Instead, the Hispanic population is lumped into the white population. Really irksome in the presentation of the list was that the Beast used a photo from about a decade ago of civil rights activist Ann Atwater with C.P Ellis, former head of the city’s KKK chapter. The photo was a publicity still from An Unlikely Friendship, a 2002 film by Chapel Hill’s Diane Bloom that details how the two enemies during the 1970s became friends. It’s a complicated story and worth delving into (dianebloom.com). Ellis died several years back and Atwater has had some serious health issues. On the Beast site, Bloom isn’t credited and there’s no indication of who the people in the photo are.

All that said, yes, Durham does seem to be a more tolerant place than others and it’s nice someone said so. And thankfully, a lot of my friends who posted the link to The Daily Beast’s list did so with a comment along the lines of “I hate these lists but hooray for Durham.”

No doubt Durham’s leaders will herald the news and put a link to that sucker right on top of their website, just like we do here whenever we’re awarded a top spot for something. You can’t fault town leaders for trumpeting a little good news, as long as they keep it in perspective and remember the cursory nature of these lists.

It won’t be long before some other place around here is named the best town for something or other. Best keep a few grains of salt at the ready.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme