Monday, December 17, 2007
West End Press Notes
Posted by: lain // Category: Atlanta, West End // 9:52 am
West End is a neighborhood that’s traditionally gotten the short end of the public relations stick.
Much of the bad press stems from stale perceptions of crime and decay that folks haven’t bothered to update over the past couple of decades. After that, it’s reinforced with every news report you hear about southwest Atlanta.
In fact, most people think the Wren’s Nest is in a real bad neighborhood. There are a few positives that come out of this–for example, people tend to assume the staff of the Wren’s Nest is tough. Real tough.
But while our reputation for cracking skulls is awesome, it’s about as factual as West End is a bad neighborhood.
(photo by Jenny Girtman, plus you can see Amelia if you squint real hard.)
This morning I was so glad to wake up and read West End Embraces Community’s History in the AJC. It’s a cool change of pace for the media, and while it may not seem there’s anything particularly interesting about a holiday party, simply the fact that West End is being portrayed positively is a major victory.
For a while now, it seemed like Our West End Newsletter was our sole resource for positive press. It’s great that we have a newspaper, but to say it’s biased is a bit of an understatement–the beauty of OWEN is that it’s created by the community itself. It’s written, published, and distributed by volunteers, and is usually quite well done.
They just launched a new website the other day, and I’m still blown away by how great it looks.
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[...] In truth, West End is a great place to spend most of my time. The neighbors are friendly, the neighborhood is convenient to everywhere, we’ve seen a lot of recent investment, and it’s definitely not as dangerous as the media may try to spin it. [...]