Hundreds of members of the international media arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday morning, made their way through a gauntlet of security and arrived at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center with no big stories to cover and editors back home waiting for news.

They did what any good journalist would do: They punted. The story became why Pittsburgh was chosen to be the site of the G-20 summit.

When Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and County Executive Dan Onorato walked into the convention center as the only officials in a room of hundreds of bored journalists, they immediately were set upon.

Mr. Onorato appeared on Sky TV, Fox Business, MSNBC and CNN yesterday. (The day before, he talked to 20 different foreign media outlets for television, radio and newspapers). What was he saying? "I was telling Pittsburgh's story."

He even had a flash drive ready to hand to visiting reporters that was loaded with photos of Allegheny County's businesses, parks and development opportunities and statistics showing how Pittsburgh diversified its economy and overcame the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s.

Mr. Ravenstahl told an Associated Press International television crew that this is the city's chance to show that the smoke stacks are long gone and Pittsburgh is a good place to locate a business.

"This is a great opportunity for Pittsburgh to showcase itself," he said to the reporter. "The opportunity we have is to introduce -- to reintroduce -- Pittsburgh to the world. ... If you are looking for a North American city, Pittsburgh makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons."

When he was asked about the fact that Downtown was essentially closed, Mr. Ravenstahl said it was a minor inconvenience for great exposure and that Pittsburghers understood the importance of the event.

After the interviews Mr. Ravenstahl called the G-20 a great opportunity to talk about Pittsburgh to an international audience.

"The question they ask over and over again is 'Why Pittsburgh?'," he said. "It's never been teed up like this."

Dennis Yablonsky, CEO of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, has been serving up local politicians and business leaders to the international media for months.

"The media's all here, and they're all interested in telling why Pittsburgh was chosen and what's the story behind the story," Mr. Yablonsky said.

He said VisitPittsburgh has been conducting press tours of Pittsburgh.

In recent weeks, Mr. Yablonsky said, there has been coverage of Pittsburgh on news wires run by Reuters, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, with stories in USA Today, Newsweek and Time and additional coverage from foreign outlets from France, The Netherlands, Germany and China.

"And there's more coming," he said.

The coverage, he said, plays into the message that local leaders want to send to the world.

"We think there are corporate executives who are saying 'I think I ought to be thinking about Pittsburgh for an upcoming expansion,' " he said.

While the world messages are good, Richard H. Sherwood, president of Front Row Marketing Services LP, said it is hard to quantify what the impact will ultimately be, depending on the response to protests.

"The PR could be good and bad," he said.

The word local leaders are trying to send out is that Pittsburgh is doing better than other rust-belt cities because the economy is more diverse than it was 30 years ago, Mr. Yablonsky said.

Other benefits of the G-20 summit, he said, is the amount of money spent by visitors on hotels and meals and the 40,000 trade hours that workers put in to build out the convention center with offices and conference rooms for the summit.