I was by chance in Europe during the Riots of 2001. The press coverage over there was unbelievable! (I guess it was similar here).There was a special bulletin handed out to the passengers on our ship between Casablanca and Lisbon. When a bartender in Madrid admitted that things were not perfect in Europe either (actually hundreds were dying and hundreds of thousands were abandoning their homes in Kosovo at the time), that put it in perspective for me. The media and the Federal Government put a small group of criminals in control of Cincinnati that spring. The increasingly ghettoized city of Cincinnati may in fact never recover. Incorporated Cincinnati is however less than 1/10 of the Cincinnati urban area, and shrinking every day.
Actually, the national coverage here was pretty minimal. BOR covered it a little on FNC (this was before he was out of control with the big head). Otherwise, almost no coverage in the national media, and a lot of that was slanted against the police. The reason it was so well covered here, was postings from local sources, including FReepers listening to police scanners and posting what they heard in real time. Here’s a good link, with a meta-links post just a few down:
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad646ad6811.htm
Atlanta is very similar to Cincy, on the metro area vs. city thing. The City of Atlanta proper is around 10% of the metro area population, and even that has gentrified substantially. There are still some pretty bad areas to be found, though, as you’d expect. The current mayor down there, while far from a conservative, is so much better than the previous two decades’ mayors, that it’s pretty amazing. She is really trying to make things work and get better.