When did the US media start thinking Americans don't know where cities are?

Factual Questions
21

When I watch CHCH out of Hamilton, Ontario, and they refer to “London,” I assume they’re referring to London, Ontario. Similarly, if I’m watching WKBW out of Buffalo, NY, and they refer to “Rome,” I assume they’re referring to Rome, NY.

Most, though I agree not all, areas in North America have a local nightly news program, followed by the national nightly news. Perhaps the policymakers at CBC, ABC, NBC, CBS et al. decided that Joe Schmo from Buffalo or Gord Schmo from Hamilton might get confused if they’ve been watching the local news referring to “Rome” or “London” meaning one city, then watch the national news where “Rome” or “London” refers to another. So, they add a national qualifier–not all the time, mind you, but just at the top of the story. WAG, I know.

Mind you, I don’t know what this would have to do with a header of “Bangkok, Thailand.” I don’t think there are too many towns called Bangkok around here. But, knowing how journalists keep set styles, I suppose all the header cities had to have their trailing nations.

22

The Associated Press Stylebook actually has a list of cities that need no state or country identification in the dateline (which is what it’s called, even though it’s a place, not a date identifier). They are –

Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington.

The following non-American cities are listed as not needing country identification –

Beijing, Berlin, Geneva, Gibraltar, Guatemala City, Havana, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Kuwait, London, Luxembourg, Macao, Mexico City, Monaco, Montreal, Moscow, Ottawa, Paris, Quebec, Rome, San Marino, Singapore, Tokyo, and Vatican City

(This is from my 1987 edition – so there might have been some changes since then)

Thus, American newspapers will probably not refer to “London, England,” or “Paris, France,” in print although this is common in speech.

But even for fairly large American cities it’s “Kansas City, Mo.,” “Oakland, Calif.,” “Buffalo, N.Y.,” “Hartford, Conn.,” “Columbus, Ohio,” “Norfolk, Va.,” “Charleston, S.C.,” “Savannah, Ga.,” “Jacksonville, Fla.,” “Tampa, Fla.,” “Memphis, Tenn.,” “Nashville, Tenn.,” “Charlotte, N.C.,” “San Antonio, Texas,” “Fort Worth, Texas,” “Omaha, Neb.,” “Phoenix, Ariz.,” etc. (The A.P., wisely, doesn’t follow those ugly postal abbreviations for states.)

I don’t think that the “Paris, France,” habit is either a knock on furriners or a sign of ignorance. It’s simply, as has been stated before, that most Americans are used to the idea that a city’s full name includes a territorial modifier and also, “London” and “Paris” and almost every major European city could be one of dozens of cities and towns in the United States.

23

CNN (not a newspaper, I know) doesn’t follow that mode. Online, Pittsburgh is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Baltimore is Baltimore, Maryland. And I just did a quick search and found a story from Geneva, Switzerland.

24

Okay, I’ve just brought my 2001 AP broadcast stylebook in from the car.

There are two full pages of cities which do not require a modifier. In the US, most major cities do not require a state. In some cases, like Miami, it’s assumed that if it’s unmodified, the writer means Miami, Florida. If the story takes place at Miami University in Ohio, the dateline should reflect that.

In the case of the regional wire, a city alone is assumed to be in that state/region. So a story on the Illinois or Midwest regional wire with a dateline of “Springfield” will assume that the story takes place in the Illinois state capital and not, say, Springfield, Virginia.

For foreign cities, the rules are the same. Most major cities do not require a country. However, there are some cases where, for example, London will require a modifier to distinguish London, England from London, Ontario.

By and large, though, it’s really a judgment call on the part of the writer or editor. If it’s not clear where the story takes place, the location gets a modifier.

Robin

25

I think Bosda misread the part of post that said:

as

26

I would think that CNN, which has a rather large audience worldwide, probably requires more identifiers for place names than other news organizations.

AP’s style guide is probably different from Reuters.

As for Miami University, it’s in Oxford, Ohiom so I hope the dateline would be different.

The University of Miami isn’t even in Miami, but rather Coral Gables. But since that school is written up mainly in the sports section, you see a “Miami” dateline since that’s where the Orange Bowl is. However, a basketball game should have a Coral Gables, Florida dateline since that’s where the Hurricanes play basketball.

AP does used “Stanford, Calif.” as the dateline for Stanford University, which is correct as Stanford is not in Palo Alto as most people think.

I poked around Reuters and it looked like most of their dateline conventions were similar to AP’s. I couldn’t check too many different U.S. cities as the vast majority of US articles on Reuters right now have the dateline “Mancheseter, N.H.”

Would the “other” Manchester (i.e., the really big city in the UK) not get a country identified on Reuters?

27

I don’t know about Reuters’ dateline conventions.

In my original remark in this thread, however, the dateline isn’t where the story necessarily takes place. AP requires that the dateline reflect where the story was filed, rather than where it took place. So a story at the University of Miami would have a Miami dateline unless the AP has a Coral Gables bureau. A story out of Oxford, Ohio would carry a dateline reflecting the closest AP bureau, or the place where the story was actually filed.

So a Miami-Coral Gables debate is nonexistent.

Robin

28

Maybe he was in a London studio?

29

This reminds me, did San Jose ever succeed in convincing the AP they didn’t need a modifier? They were working on it a couple years back, but I’m not sure if they won or not. They’re a little bitter that San Francisco doesn’t need a modifier, but San Jose (which is quite a lot larger) does.

30

It’s not just about population or geographic size, though. It’s about a city’s historical and cultural importance that make it instantly recognizable. (Other than regular clarity issues, such as with Washington, D.C., and the Kansas Cities.)

31

No it doesn’t: Breaking International News & Views | Reuters

32

At my college newspaper, which generally follows the AP style guidelines, we don’t have datelines, but we apply these rules to cities within the story. In addition to the AP guidelines, we also have developed a list of significant cities in our area which require no state name. It’s really rather interesting.

Anyhow, my guess is that each paper follows the same basic guidelines, but local papers probably modify them to better suit their readership.

33

I’ve wondered why I hear and see “City, State” when referring to U.S. cities, but never “City, Province” for Canadian cities, it’s almost always “City, Canada” on the news.

34

Because too many people would be confused by British Columbia? :wink:

35

acsenray writes:

> The Associated Press Stylebook actually has a list of cities that need no state
> or country identification in the dateline (which is what it’s called, even though
> it’s a place, not a date identifier). They are –
>
> Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver,
> Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee,
> Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,
> St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington.
>
> . . .
>
> But even for fairly large American cities it’s “Kansas City, Mo.,” “Oakland,
> Calif.,” “Buffalo, N.Y.,” “Hartford, Conn.,” “Columbus, Ohio,” “Norfolk,
> Va.,” “Charleston, S.C.,” “Savannah, Ga.,” “Jacksonville, Fla.,” “Tampa,
> Fla.,” “Memphis, Tenn.,” “Nashville, Tenn.,” “Charlotte, N.C.,” “San Antonio,
> Texas,” “Fort Worth, Texas,” “Omaha, Neb.,” “Phoenix, Ariz.,” etc.

Well, clearly it’s not a matter of population. Columbus’s population is 725,228, while Cincinnati’s is 323,885.

36

Woo! Thank you MsRobyn for a real answer, and thanks to all who clarified it!

I should point out that (especially WRT New England), we English have many of your place names (we had them first, of course :stuck_out_tongue: ), and now I am starting to recall that where the names are also particularly famous American cities, broadcasters do indeed qualify them with their location - e.g. “Boston, Lincolnshire”, and “Washington, Tyne and Wear”.

So the next question is, when did this become a ubiquitous practise, seeing that it was not always thus?