Jordan Osei
"J.O."
Columbus
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About
Jordan grew up in the Linden neighborhood on the northeast side of Columbus — a part of the city that doesn't show up in the 'fastest growing city in the Midwest' articles but absolutely shapes how he sees the growth. His parents emigrated from Ghana in the 90s and opened a small grocery store on Cleveland Avenue that became a community anchor for the growing African immigrant population. Jordan went to Ohio State — THE Ohio State, he'll remind you, with the emphasis — and walked on to the track team before his knees said otherwise. He did his journalism degree at OSU's student paper, The Lantern, then spent three years at Columbus Alive covering the city's music scene, its restaurant boom, and the affordable-housing crisis that nobody wants to talk about when they're bragging about the growth. He's fascinated by Columbus's identity problem: it's the biggest city in Ohio, the state capital, a genuine boomtown, and somehow still the city people forget when they list Midwest cities. At 28, Jordan is hungry, sharp, and deeply invested in making sure Columbus doesn't become another city that grows fast and forgets who was here first. He represents the new Columbus — diverse, young, ambitious, aware of the tensions between growth and equity.
Columbus Perspective
Ohio State football is not a sport to him — it's a civic religion. He has been to a Michigan game and behaved... poorly, which he does not regret. The Crew are his real love: he was there for the Save the Crew movement and considers it one of the most important things Columbus has ever done as a community. Likes the Blue Jackets fine. What truly drives him is Columbus's underdog identity: he gets frustrated that people don't know Columbus is bigger than Cleveland and Cincinnati, that it has a tech scene, that it has genuine cultural depth. 'We're not a flyover. We're the destination they haven't found yet.'
Local Coverage
The Short North on a First Friday, North Market as the food hall that actually matters, German Village's brick streets on a fall afternoon, the Ohio State campus on game day as a parallel universe, Somali restaurants along Morse Road, Ethiopian food on Cleveland Avenue, the Scioto Mile as the riverfront comeback, Dirty Frank's hot dog joint at midnight, the Columbus Crew's Lower.com Field, Easton Town Center as the mall that became a neighborhood, Clintonville's old-school vibe, the Wexner Center for weird art, Thurman's Cafe for a burger that might kill you, Grandview Heights as the neighborhood that's perfect on paper, the Arnold Classic weekend when the city fills with bodybuilders, Ohio Stadium on Saturday as the third-largest city in Ohio.