"Nothing makes a data journalist’s heart skip a beat quite like the word 'Midwest'... It’s a concrete geographic construct linked to an ephemeral cultural one."

"In Airbnb, we’d stumbled on an ideal data set for drawing that elusive line between culture and geography. More importantly, once we’d looked at more than half a million Airbnb listings and built a database powerful enough to answer 'Where is the Midwest?' we could use it to answer a much more difficult follow-up: 'What is the Midwest?' What cultural touchstones make it different from the rest of the country? .... By this measure, Iowa is the most Midwestern state in the union, followed by Indiana and Wisconsin.... By this measure, the most Midwestern thing on Earth is the walleye, a drab but delicious freshwater fish whose primeval bulging eyes and snaggled teeth would look at home in one of those Nebraska fossil beds.... Two of the next three most-Midwestern words, 'Heartland' and 'Lutheran,' seem like gimmes.... 'Conservatory' and 'orchestra' seem odd, but Google Trends confirms that both are unusually popular in Midwestern states. If you think you know why, let us know! Three others are probably artifacts of the sort of property- and hospitality-focused Midwestern English you’d expect from an Airbnb listing — 'rehabbed' for renovated, 'blacktop' for asphalt and 'supper' for dinner. Several other freshwater fish join walleye on the list, including bluegill and the bass varieties of smallmouth and largemouth...."

From "The most Midwestern things on Earth, according to data/We looked at hundreds of thousands of Airbnb listings to calculate how the heartland describes itself" by Andrew Van Dam (WaPo).

Well... it's an interesting idea — using the words found in Airbnb to figure something out. But the glaring deficiency is that Airbnb is aimed at outsiders: Why would they want to travel here? You're not going to see why we of the Midwest are here and what the place — as a giant whole or the little part where any given one of us lives — means to us. You're not going to find out what it means to the people — my mother or my sons, for example — who grew up in the Midwest, but went elsewhere as adults with the power to choose where to live.

What does it mean to me? I had a mother who grew up in a midwestern city (Ann Arbor), but I grew up on the east coast (Delaware and New Jersey), went to my mother's home city for college, left for a while (to New York), and then went back (to Madison ) — went back 2 or 3 or 4 more times (depending on how you count). And by "back," I don't mean for a vacation. I mean to live there as my home. I really want to live in the American Midwest, and I am capable of moving and living anywhere. I have actively chosen it over and over, throughout my life.

But for outsiders, looking for a vacation, sure, the fish are going to be very important! The fish give you wacky "data journalists" something to nerd out over. Where there are data, fascinating linkable articles can be written. The data journalists are biting this morning, and so — I have the self-awareness to confess — are the bloggers.