With Reporters Around for Primary,
Times of London & The Economist
Offer Takes on How Cleveland Fares

With the tight and dramatic race for the Democratic presidential nomination attracting unprecedented interest from the global media, hundreds of reporters from around the world are competing for every scrap of information they can find to write about. With the attention recently having moved to tomorrow's Ohio primary, the hunt for scraps moved closer to home. Last week, two leading British-based publications published interesting looks at Cleveland. The Economist weighed in with a typically smart look at what the Cleveland Clinic's success means for the area's economy, comparing it with another extremely successful hospital, the Mayo Clinic in the Twin Cities. In the process, it made the interesting observation that as host to three million visitors each year, the hospital system is beginning to take on the characteristics of a hospitality organization. It also noted that when two major buildings are completed, the complex will be twice the size of the Pentagon. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, meanwhile, offered a bleak look at the subprime crisis's effect on Cleveland, likening it to the devastation Hurricane Katrina visited on New Orleans. Not a terribly original observation, of course, but then, Murdoch-owned media are not known for their originality.