You’d think it was a dark and stormy night with no light when some reporters parachuted into Detroit over the last year. They landed with orders to chronicle the demise of Detroit thinking they knew the terrain.

Too many reporters find bits and pieces and write the same ‘fall of a great city’ story over and over again. The story that needs to be chronicled is Detroit’s transformation.

The Detroit Regional News Hub’s job is to help reporters find the entire story of our region by providing them with the facts, figures, experts and stories about the Detroit region. Without spin we convey the strengths and assets of the region while owning up to its weaknesses.

We want them to know the region has:

• More than $2 billion of investment has been committed to Midtown over the next three years.
• 19 businesses that announced economic investments totaling more than $5.8 billion from 2008 to 2009.
• More than 100 alternative energy companies and the most engineers per capita in the U.S.
• More than 300 R&D centers within 50 miles of the city.
• A diverse population and culture including the second biggest Arab American population in the United States and vibrant Hispanic, Asian and African American communities.
• A bio science and bio medical hub with Henry Ford Health System, Wayne State University, University of Michigan, the Taubman Medical Research Institute and the University Research Corridor.
• The busiest trade corridor in the world, with more than $1.1 billion in goods crossing the border daily.
• Growing entrepreneurship: 1700 people have completed a FastTrac Program at Tech Town to learn how to start new businesses. Funded by the Kauffman Foundation and the New Economy Initiative, it will create 400 companies over the next 3 years.

We also want them to know many in the Detroit School System care deeply about education and are committed to learning.

But too often we are our own worst enemy. A Norwegian reporter was assigned to do a story on the demise of Detroit. He spent five days here. He went to a Lions game where one fan asked him, “What did you do to your editor to make him send you to Detroit?”

Another reporter from London compared Detroit to the “great ruins of Central America or ancient Europe, the pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico or the labyrinthine streets of Ephesus in Turkey.” He used the abandoned Packard plant as a verbal illustration of what Detroit looks like, writing that, “Over the dust and the debris under foot and through the weeds and even trees that have burst through the broken concrete, you find little reminders of what this place once was.”

Time magazine used the plant for its cover story, “The Tragedy of Detroit,” and continues to refer to its “Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline” picture gallery on its blog. Unlike many, Time has not parachuted in. It bought a house and placed a seasoned reporter here to cover the region for a year. He will write stories that will make us proud and he will write stories that make us cringe. However, if they are accurate we need to get over ourselves and work together to transform the region.

The reporters will continue to come. The stories the Detroit region offers are just too juicy to pass up. Many will parachute in, but our hope is we will be able to help more see beyond the obvious.

If we all begin to talk about the transformation of the Detroit region to everyone, everywhere, the stories reporters write will change too.

For more information, visit www.thedetroithub.com.

Marjorie Sorge is the executive director of the Detroit Regional News Hub.