From the window of a passing jetliner, the social makeup of Lewiston-Auburn looks easy to evaluate: former mill towns, mired in economic transition, influx of immigrants, revival.

Et voil – instant cause and effect.

There’s a real jetliner in this case – a glossy printed one. Newsweek, in its Jan. 26 edition, profiled Lewiston as the city “saved by refugees.” It painted the community as a mass of rundown hovels until the Somali migration saved it from crumbling ruins.

Sounds like a great yarn. We wish it had a shred of truth. Fact is, the revival of these cities is attributable to myriad factors and interests. No single segment has monopolized the future of the community; we remain an intricate tapestry, as always, woven from innumerable threads.

Of course, this story isn’t as good. “Central Maine cities have ups and downs” doesn’t fit within the vision of Newsweek, especially for its inauguration edition that devoted attention to the promise of President Barack Obama creating a new, post-racial American society.

We hope he does – don’t get us wrong. But it strikes us that a real post-racial society will come along only when race is no longer noticed. In a real post-racial society, stories like Newsweek’s wouldn’t appear, because integration and racial harmony wouldn’t be news.

It still is, though, for good reason. To find the community Newsweek wanted to profile, it had to almost invent it from whole cloth. To the nation, Lewiston was held as an example of the good that growing multiculturalism can have. But the magazine went overboard.

While the Somali migration has improved this community, seeds of Lewiston’s revival were sown long before. Plans for redevelopment, social programs, educational opportunities and mindset alterations started in the mid-1990s, and have continued with success through today.

Crediting one group for these advancements – regardless of which one – is plain unfair. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a community to change a community.

This is what Newsweek missed, for whatever reason. If the magazine wanted the real story about multiculturalism in L-A and its positives, here’s what we could have said:

• That after a difficult beginning, things have smoothed. We still have our odd incidents, but they’ve grown more juvenile and less hateful. Our community has moved on.

• This is due to tireless work of advocates, clergy, businesspeople and social activists who got tired of seeing the cities dragged through the muck, and worked to change it.

• While we’ve come far, L-A, like the nation, still has far to go.

• And together, we’ll get there.

That is the real L-A story Newsweek just plain missed. But despite everything, the magazine should be credited for something. It’s given us the chance to tell it.