JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Justin Webb, North American editor for the BBC, conducts an interview in Roanoke on Monday.

So this British newspaper reporter walks into the Texas Tavern and eats a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top. His name is Gary Younge, a fellow with a pirate's hoop earring and a friendly chuckle who has worked all over the world but has never met a Cheesy Western.

Welcome to Roanoke, capital of Southwest Virginia, the corner of a state that looks like it will cast a crucial vote for the next president.

It's the first time in almost 50 years that the election watchers are not sure which way Virginia will vote, so the big city media are making regular stops here to figure out the locals.

The New Yorker magazine, British Broadcasting Corp. and Toronto Star have passed through Roanoke. National Public Radio hosts are watching the debates in these parts. An unsmiling pair of Finnish men recently appeared in Market Square carrying a TV camera.

And there is Younge, an opinion writer for Britain's Guardian newspaper, who is embedded in Roanoke for a few weeks to meet the voters, tell the stories and shoot the guns.

For the election season '08, the media have picked the city to represent some significant voting groups: Swing voters, Appalachian voters, Middle American voters. Call us the new Peoria.

Roanoke is a battleground within a battleground state, said one BBC producer, Adi Raval.

Roanoke is where rural and urban America split, said the Toronto Star reporter, Olivia Ward.

Roanoke is Anytown, U.S.A., Younge wrote. Though when his Cheesy Western was gone, he explained why this Anytown matters.

Younge went looking for a place with a significant black population, because race is an issue in this election, and thought of Florida. But that was a story for 2000.

He wanted a swing town in a swing state, and considered going to Ohio. But that was a story for 2004.

All of which makes Roanoke sound important -- a starring role in the story for 2008.

"If Obama carries Virginia, he wins the election," said Brian Richardson, who heads the department of journalism and mass communication at Washington and Lee University. But questions remain about how white, working-class voters are accepting Barack Obama, he said, and journalists are coming to Southwest Virginia to ask them.

The historic candidacy of the biracial Democratic nominee has been an appealing story line for the foreign press, Richardson added. Plus media coverage begets media coverage. The Toronto Star landed in Roanoke after a piece ran in The New Yorker.

But outside inspection can be unflattering. Reports from Southwest Virginia often begin with how isolated and depressed the region is.

The Los Angeles Times found the town of Whitewood -- a dot on the Dismal River -- and with it plenty of ambivalence in Buchanan County about supporting a black man.

"Where exactly were you?" Renee Montagne asked on NPR's "Morning Edition" after a colleague watched the vice presidential debate in Wise. Then later, "We should mention you're in a remote, rural area."

The New Yorker described Southwest Virginia as "a place of small farms, coal mines, and chronic economic hard times."

Younge set his first video dispatch for the Guardian to twanging banjo music and included a raccoon that was, inexplicably, nesting in a sewer in downtown Roanoke.

His coverage has been warmly received locally, though there have been a few critics, he said.

In a local bar, one tipsy patron recognized the Englishman and accused him of making a video "about how we're all rednecks."

A short item by Ralph Berrier Jr., a writer of Southwest Virginia stock who also works for The Roanoke Times, ran in this newspaper fact-checking some points in Younge's reports.

"Everybody's got their own authentic Roanoke," Younge said later. "If you play something that doesn't chime with that, they're like, 'That's just one person.' "

"Well, you're just one person," he concluded.

Younge said he wants to paint a balanced portrait of the area. That has meant canvassing with Obama supporters, watching a debate with John McCain supporters and shooting a Glock pistol in Franklin County.

But he said he did not sip any white lightning.