New York, and Washington. At least if you're in the news media. (Other cities exist in other worlds - San Francisco in the tech world; for example, or LA in the entertainment world).
Time's new move to close its bureaus, emphasizes this: [1]
Time magazine is closing its Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles bureaus, though it will keep three "laptop" correspondents in L.A. People is closing its Washington, Miami, Chicago and Austin bureaus, and plans to maintain regional coverage using seven newly created reporting positions, spokeswoman Sandi Shurgin said. . .
. . . Those who remain at Time Inc. will work at a news-gathering operation very different from the one Luce created at Time magazine in 1922, in which correspondents across the country sent feeds to writers in New York in a kind of caste system. Even though the magazine did not print writers' bylines until 1980, writers occupied the top tier. Below were reporters, whose work on the articles was acknowledged, if at all, in credit lines at the end. Below them were stringers deployed around the country, all funneling facts to the writers in New York.
Now, Time magazine is largely scrapping the system and hiring high-profile stylistic writers, such as Michael Kinsley, William Kristol and former Washington Post reporter and author David Von Drehle.
American discourse continues to flee, not just to the coasts, but to very concentrated areas on the coasts. When those in other areas complain about the coasts, this is the root of what they're complaining about.
Moreover, in the journalism (loosely defined) business, news rooms continue to hollow and be centralized into a few locations. The rungs beneath the top are being thinned out and the few marquee writers are continuing to get not only more of the attention and work, but more of the money as well - top paid columnists and writers get paid much better than the remaining journalistic slobs who work the front lines, and they get paid for what often amounts to little more than what a good blogger does for free, and in many cases does better, for free.
When there were more than 5 media conglomerates controlling over 80%% of the media in the US, there were also a lot more reporters, columnists and byliners. Even if a paper or radio station used syndicated personalities they also tended to keep some in house; to feel that they needed to develop a unique brand.
The result has been a reduction in the amount of local coverage of all sorts (the FCC has measured this); massive staff reductions; a narrowing of the discourse; and, I think, a fairly clear development of an even greater echo-chamber effect within the corporate media than existed in the past (which was by no means a golden era.)
The solution is simple - the media conglomerates need to be broken up. There will be, almost immediately, more diversity in voices, more local news coverage, and more room for alternate views to be expressed and hopefully break through what has become a New York/Washington echo chamber dominated by, at most, a few hundred writers, journalists, editors and owners.