Stop it with the N.C., already

Our city has the Panthers, the Bobcats, Bank of America and even the dang Democratic National Convention. And still news readers around the USA have to be reminded that we are Charlotte, N.C.?

Baltimore has fewer people, but you won’t see Baltimore, Md. atop news stories about prize crab-cakes or baseball Orioles.

This dateline bias does not sit well with many Charlotteans, including those of us at the Dish. But now one proud Charlotte transplant is trying to do something about it.

And Jill Santuccio -- owner of PRISM Communications, a Charlotte PR firm -- thinks the upcoming convention could help our cause for a standalone dateline.

To host the DNC, Charlotte beat out St. Louis, Cleveland and Minneapolis. So isn’t it just a little bit INFURIATING that we are the only one in that quartet still saddled to its state ID?

Of the 46 cities that have hosted the Democratic National Convention over the years, former journalist Santuccio discovered, only three needed a state for news readers to locate them -- Atlantic City, N.J. (1964), Kansas City, Mo. (1900), and our neighbor Charleston, S.C. (1860).

The rest of them -- including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta and, yes, Baltimore -- didn’t need no stinkin’ state abbreviation behind their name.

So, Santuccio has written the Associated Press editorial board to make the case for a change in the revered AP Stylebook that dictates which cities get standalone datelines and which don’t.

When Santuccio, now 44, went to journalism school, the professor would give a closed-book quiz on such things. "I’ve always been an AP Stylebook geek," she told us. "I still know the five states that you don’t abbreviate."

Not only does AP follow its stylebook; so do many newspapers. So this is a Big Deal, readers.

Santuccio hasn’t heard back yet from AP, whose reasons for sticking Charlotte with N.C. are so-outta-date. But she’s bringing in reinforcements: We’re talking ex-Observer columnist Tommy Tomlinson.

"Many people used to confuse Charlotte with Charleston, S.C., or Charleston, W.Va., or Charlottesville, Va., but no more," Tommy wrote, "The people who still confuse us with them are people who probably don’t care about the nuances of the AP Stylebook. Or, for that matter, reading."

Santuccio is a Rochester, um, N.Y., native. But she’s been in the Queen City, N.C., for 22 years, and she wants her adopted city to finally get its due, dateline-wise.

"Charlotte has worked really hard to be on the national and international stage," she says. "And getting a standalone dateline would be another sign that we have arrived."

Tim Funk