Two weeks ago, TheAge launched a huge front-page campaign to find an icon for Melbourne – a landmark to “alert visitors to the fact that they are in Melbourne”, wrote Jonathan Green.

You could practically hear the fanfare as The Agetrumpeted its lead story. Bursting with parochial pride, the paper announced that “it is easy to have a big idea. It is harder to have a vision”. Melbourne, it said, “needs more than commercial imperatives to give it shape. It needs an altruism born of the love of the place itself”.

And in a breathless double-page spread, The Age pondered what kind of icon it could be? “A music centre, a futuristic hub, an indigenous arts museum or an institute for water studies…? Get ready for a fiery debate.”

But readers searching for a follow-up to The Age‘s civic project will have been disappointed: the story has vanished. Crikey sources say it’s apparently been dumped due to lack of interest.