SALENA ZITO: Seeing America from the Ground.

A couple of weeks ago, a native Long Islander who has called New York City his home for half a dozen years took his first trip to the Midwest for a news assignment to discuss what he found different about the way of life out here.

He flew to both Chicago and Detroit to learn about this foreign land.

The social media criticism of the resulting story was swift and brutal. The piece wasn’t any worse than the typical story flyover country folk read about themselves. But the oddest thing was that he tried to find the “Midwest” solely in the big cities of Chicago and Detroit. The true measure of the Midwest begins somewhere near the Pennsylvania state line.

Had he driven the 21 hours and 18 minutes it would take on the back roads between New York City and Chicago, he would have had one heck of a story to write about the country and the Midwest.

A mere one hundred miles from his front door, he would have found himself culturally beginning to understand what lies ahead.

Too much work, unless you’re a real reporter like Salena Zito. Who at one point was accused of making up quotes (she didn’t, she had recordings) on the ridiculous basis that flyover people couldn’t possibly speak that articulately.