The Ohio State University

onCampus

• Help
• Buckeye Link
• Map
• Find People
• Webmail
• Search

  Search Ohio State Go

Columbus’ bicentennial gets the royal treatment from WOSU Public Media

Posted on | March 4, 2010 | 2,953 views |

an open letter to the city, by Adam King

Happy birthday, Columbus!

Of course, No. 198 isn’t one of those “big” birthdays to make a fuss over, but 2012 will be here soon enough, and celebrating your bicentennial takes planning, panache and a willingness to place you on a pedestal and laud your historical richness.

That’s why WOSU Public Media will use the next two years to tell your story, starting with the 8 p.m. March 8 premier of Columbus Neighborhoods: Short North, a one-hour documentary that brings to life the tale of this rough-and-tumble area now turned creative utopia.

It’s the first of six Columbus Neighborhoods documentaries WOSU is producing about key areas that shaped you as a city. German Village will air this autumn; 2011 will see the debuts of Olde Towne East, University District and King-Lincoln; and Downtown and Franklinton airs exactly 200 years to the day of your founding on Feb. 14, 2012.

“Each one will be distinctive,” said Tom Rieland, WOSU Public Media’s general manager. “The Short North is quite different in history and culture than German Village, and then King-Lincoln will have an entirely different story. We’re not putting the documentaries into a template, and we’ll be using different producers for each in many cases. They’re all going to stand alone and be distinctive in their approach.”

Tourists and people moving here want to know more about you too, so Experience Columbus is getting excited about the potential of the Columbus Neighborhoods Web site (columbusneighborhoods.org). The site needs a good start, and WOSU is actively encouraging local bloggers and community leaders to be contributors.

WOSU recognizes there literally are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods that combine to make you who you are, Columbus. And while the Web site starts with a list of only 30, you won’t be short-changed; WOSU will be taking suggestions to add more.

“We’re trying to be as open as humanly possible with the site,” Rieland said. “We’re looking for a really rich and robust site that grows organically. We’re trying to feed it over the next couple months, and as the documentaries air, we expect there will be even more interest, especially from people in those communities.”

So the years leading up to your bicentennial are going to be anything but humdrum. In fact, WOSU also plans to hold town hall forums at its COSI studios with residents from your featured communities in the documentaries. They’ll discuss issues facing them now, what changes they’ve witnessed and what your future will look like.

“You get to know the issues in the community and the differences in opinion,” said Rieland, who expects to air the forums after the rebroadcast of each documentary, approximately four to six weeks after they originally air.

WOSU will be asking for honesty, of course, which means not every story will be sunshine and roses. But you’ve been around this long, Columbus, so chances are you’ll hold up to scrutiny.

You can take heart in the fact that the $700,000 WOSU Public Media raised to tell your story is the most it has ever garnered for a local project, and Columbus Neighborhoods has become its largest undertaking, so people out there think you’re worth celebrating.

And hey, who doesn’t like being popular?

so much to tell, so little time

Mary Rathke lived in the Short North during the 1980s, so she was quite pleased (she may even have lobbied a little) to be the person WOSU Public Media selected to produce the first episode of its Columbus Neighborhoods series, which will premier at 8 p.m. March 8 on WOSU TV.

She learned more about the Short North in the past two years working on the project than she ever did as a resident.

“We really have a deep, rich history,” Rathke said. “When I lived in the Short North, I wondered why there were new buildings surrounding the beautiful Victorian Village homes, and now I know because there was a little community of houses called Flytown, originally an immigrant portal to the city. Flytown didn’t survive because of urban renewal and the highway development.”

Many people think of the Short North as what lies on High Street, but the Columbus Neighborhoods documentary, like the other five to be produced, doesn’t stay strictly to the map when delving into each area’s history. Rathke’s look back includes Victorian Village, Harrison West, Flytown, Italian Village, Union Station and the High Street corridor.

The easy part of the project was finding people who lived there to tell the Short North’s stories and getting background music. At WOSU’s request, 33 musicians from all over Ohio sent in 50 songs that are being used in all six documentaries, and more songs are still being sought.

What took the bulk of the two years was finding enough photos and images to create the visuals necessary.

“I was still finding photos I needed in January,” Rathke said. “The Ohio Historical Society played a large part in helping us with the photography and WBNS-TV had a lot of film. From there we were just picking away at people’s personal collections to see what they had hidden away.”

Then the most difficult part of the project was to whittle down the stories into a one-hour documentary. Rathke lamented she couldn’t be more in-depth on some subjects, such as the Sells Brothers Circus, because of time constraints. Other historical stories she had to leave out all together, such as the menagerie of animals at Goodale Park, the widening of High Street and unique individual businesses.

So while it’s still a vibrant and rich story on screen, the project will work to its fullest potential only if it takes on a life of its own in other ways. That’s why this will become a multimedia effort. The day Columbus Neighborhoods: Short North airs is the same day the ColumbusNeighborhoods.org Web site goes live.

In partnership with Columbus Metropolitan Library and with primary funding from JP Morgan Chase and State Auto Insurance Cos. and additional support from the OSU Medical Center, AEP Ohio, Bailey Cavalieri law firm and other local foundations and families, WOSU is inviting the people who live in Columbus’ neighborhoods to post their stories, photos, audio and video about the history and culture of their areas to columbusneighborhoods.org.

“The only criteria is talk about your community, where you work, what you like and don’t like,” said Tom Reiland, general manager of WOSU Public Media. “It’s not just history either; it’s about the history you’re creating today. I think it can be used in so many ways — just engaging in your community for one. We don’t know who our neighbors are a lot of times and that’s not good.”

WOSU is encouraging community involvement by hosting storytelling sessions at different times throughout the next two years. The next one is March 6 at the Short North’s Gallery Hop. And the Columbus Metropolitan Library is training its staff on how to scan in photos and upload videos to help residents who use library computers to participate on the Web site.

“Columbus has a deep complexity to its history, and you find unique things when taking it all in,” Rieland said. “Once you do that, you can point those things out to others and you appreciate where you live and have a great deal of pride in where you live.”

Comments