City leaders are mobilizing to figure out how to re-frame our city.

Flush with big banks, big-league sports and big ambitions, Charlotte has basked in the steady flow of national headlines proclaiming its place as a leading New South city for years.

The headlines are still coming. The basking? Not so much. Because the storyline has taken a sharp negative turn.

The fawning of a September 2008 Time story — “Charlotte is soaring, with 28 construction cranes downtown...” — has been replaced in recent months with downbeat Queen City profiles in The Washington Post and Canada’s most-influential newspaper, The Globe and Mail of Toronto. Both ran extensive feature stories that focused on rising unemployment and housing busts here.

The Toronto account included a blaring headline that read, “Charlotte: The town that Bank of America took down.”

Now Charlotte is getting ready to fight back on the public-relations front.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article, by Erik Spanberg, here.

Here's a goofy Charlotte YouTube video by FreewayJim: