Perceptions of L.A. still mired in era of riots, disasters.

In the new ABC comedy, "It's Like, You Know...," the lead character is a New Yorker who flies to L.A. to work on a book titled: "Living in Los Angeles: How Can You Stomach It?"

While en route, he says to a fellow passenger: "I hate Los Angeles."

"Why?" asks the passenger. "Bad experiences?"

"No," he says. "I've never been there."

Los Angeles has long been characterized as a city where image is far more important than substance - a place where people can easily reinvent themselves. Yet the nation's image of Los Angeles itself remains stuck.

Despite a thriving local economy, strong prospects for an NFL franchise and the Democratic National Convention on tap for next year, the national media continue to portray L.A. as a glitzy world with a dark, dangerous underside.

"Cities often get portrayed according to what they're most famous and infamous for," said Howard Kurtz, media critic for the Washington Post. "When some journalists think of L.A., they think of the Oscars, O.J., riots, earthquakes and, now, Monica Lewinsky. This kind of simplicity obviously misses the texture of a complicated urban area, but the press has a need to reduce everything to shorthand."

How much a city's image actually matters in the context of its overall health is a matter of debate. Some business people flatly dismiss the way Los Angeles is viewed by others, pointing out that L.A. County has the 11th largest economy in the world - pot shots and all. But others insist that over the long term, widely held perceptions - valid or not - can play a role in evaluating an area's quality of life or economic attractiveness. That, in turn, could determine whether businesses stay or go. Or whether workers stay or go.

How do these perceptions get started? Where else? The media.

The New York Times' account of L.A. being selected by the Democrats states that, "The convention will be held at the new 900,000-square-foot Staples Center, which is to he completed this fall. The center is downtown, a few blocks from Skid Row, which was crowded with homeless people today." (That's a rather large leap; Skid Row is actually a dozen or so blocks from Staples.)

The story goes on to discuss how the Democratic convention is likely to have little impact on L.A.'s homeless population - a curious inclusion given that homelessness, an ongoing problem in virtually all large cities, is never mentioned in the Times' story about Philadelphia winning the Republican convention.

Fred Siegel, author of "The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A. and the Fate of America's Big Cities," said much of the problem is that most of the national media is based in New York.

"I don't think most New Yorkers can see Los Angeles," said Siegel, a history professor at Cooper Union for the Arts and Sciences in New York. "New Yorkers don't have a sense of the kind of industrial dynamo L.A. has become."

Many of the stereotypes of Los Angeles reduce the area to nothing more than its most famous industry: Hollywood.

In last year's California issue of The New Yorker, a large number of the magazine's cartoons were devoted to the stereotypical entertainment-industry figure, wearing dark glasses (even when indoors) and a suit with no tie.

In one, a pony-tailed man says to a client over the phone, "Look, babe. At this point, you've reinvented yourself so many times you're back to who you were at the start."

But how many men in the entertainment industry still have ponytails or - aside from Jack Nicholson - wear sunglasses indoors?

"I think their perceptions are old," said Regina Birdsell, executive director of the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership, who has spent much the last five years trying to convince East Coast reporters and editors that there is more to L.A. than Hollywood.

"That's not to say the entertainment industry isn't important," she said. "But that's not the only thing happening in L.A."

Mayor Richard Riordan said he isn't bothered by the national media's emphasis on L.A. celebrities. "Maybe we have a few more interesting people than other cities," Riordan said. "But I think that's part of the glamour of L.A. - we even have Dennis Rodman."

The more damaging image of Los Angeles - the image that many say is a deterrent to businesses relocating or opening facilities here - is of an area dominated by riots, crime, earthquakes and urban decay.

In "It's Like, You Know...," one character asks another if, hypothetically, be would rather he at Florence and Normandie when the 1992 riots broke out, or on the beach at Normandy on D-Day during World War II.

Some attribute Such media portrayals to laziness on the part of writers. "They haven't updated their personal databases about what's happening here," Birdsell says.

Others blame L.A.-based writers and academics for failing to clear up misconceptions.

Some of the blame centers on author Mike Davis, whose "Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster" was published last year to positive reviews both on the East Coast and here, and became a bestseller in Los Angeles. Referring to the storms, fires, floods and riots that have besieged Los Angeles over the last decade, Davis, in a typical passage, wrote, "For some unlucky souls, disaster has been a relentless, Job-like ordeal."

Taking exception to such portrayals is Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow with the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy.

"You can say anything about Los Angeles and get away with it," said Kotkin. "There are very few people in town who are going to call you on it, and there are fewer people outside of town who'll call you on it. You have these people in the media who just detest the city anyway, and get away with it."

Davis did not return calls for comment.

But others say that the backlash against Davis in the last few months - including unflattering articles in The New York Times, New Times and the online magazine Salon - is a sign that L.A.'s image is improving.

"(Davis' book) was highly criticized as being highly inaccurate," said Riordan. "Bottom line is, L.A. has a much better image than it probably has ever had in its history."

H. Eric Schockman, a political science professor at USC and co-editor of the book "Rethinking Los Angeles," agreed that new, positive characterizations of L.A. are surfacing.

"There've been new voices coming to the horizon," said Schockman. "I think the whole cult of Mike Davis and his followers (is ending). I think there are new voices coming forward. I think good people and good thinkers are now starting to be heard by a national media."

Is L.A.'s image outside the area really all that important? Yes and no. While much of the city's day-to-day life is not dependent on how the outside world views L.A., there are impacts.

"It really affects the future of the community - whether businesses move here, whether businesses stay here, the ability to attract good people," said public relations executive Michael Sitrick, who represented the Orange County government after its 1994 bankruptcy. "There are dozens and dozens of reasons you want your community to have a good, vibrant image."

And at least one future event is sure to provide a further boost. "Whatever the city of L.A. is now, when the Democratic National Convention is held, thousands of journalists will descend upon the place," said Kurtz. "A national event like the Democratic convention can give any city an opportunity to reinvent itself to the national media."