PD About to Drop the Ax

[Michael Deneen]

Within the next few days we will learn the fate of The Plain Dealer.

It will most likely cut back to a three-day-a-week paper with an online presence.

This will be a bad thing for the community....although the paper had massive flaws (especially their website), the ongoing loss of investigative journalism will impact our lives.

Thoughts?

[Grace O'Malley]

I'll miss the Word Jumble.

[Bret Callentine]

Will they still be littering the streets with unwanted papers every Sunday?

[Peter Grossetti]

Whatever the PD's decision/actions are, we might consider it a public mandate for more hyper-local, citizen journalism projects, such as ... oh, I dunno, Lakewood Observer.

[Stan Austin]

I'm with Brett---- less trash on the lawns and tree lawns

[Betsy Voinovich]

Wow, guys, I'll miss the whole thing.

(Not the trash on the lawns.)

I'll miss, like Grace, the Jumble, that I do most mornings with my kids. (At this point we race.) And like every other American I will miss the comics, the horoscopes, Dear Abby, finding out who's on Letterman.

And I'll miss the front page news, and the Metro pages, the Business news which has been lately more and more about my beloved Collinwood, and the "arts" news that lately has had more and more of a local Cleveland slant.

In a word, I'll miss having a daily paper. When I lived in San Francisco, I read the Chronicle, every day. My landlord got the paper and we all passed it around at the big kitchen table in our Palo Alto house.

When I moved to L.A., I bought an LA Times every day. Great paper. The Chronicle was good paper too. I think I ran into Michael Heaton in that paper for awhile.

The PD has been slipping yes, lots of syndicated news, but still lots of writers to look to. Michael Heaton is my favorite, but longtime authorities like Brent Larkin, or people you trust like Regina Brett, or people who have a human angle every time like Philip Morris. You know, a local daily paper.

I'll never know which day there is a paper, with a 3 day paper. (As an ex-carrier, I imagine it will be Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Two big ad days, and the TV guide/Friday Magazine -- yeah I don't think there's a tv guide anymore.)

Reading the INternet for news is terrible, though if you're looking for a good site, I'd recommend news. google. com. where you can pick any paper in the world's version of a story.

But soon, not the Plain Dealer's, because the history of other dailies that have gone to 3-day papers is that they have died completely and the PD website is dreadful.

So I feel bad about it. Wish it wasn't true. Wish there was a way to save it, even while being very pleased with the Lakewood and WestlakeBay and Parma and Heights and Euclid and Collinwood and Campus District Observers.

Betsy Voinovich

[marklingm]

Whatever the PD's decision/actions are, we might consider it a public mandate for more hyper-local, citizen journalism projects, such as ... oh, I dunno, Lakewood Observer.

Peter,

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

What makes The Lakewood Observer a great newspaper (and Project), I know, is that it is Lakewood talking to itself.

Matt

[marklingm]

It will most likely cut back to a three-day-a-week paper with an online presence.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/04/northeast_ohio_media_group_to.html#incart_river%23incart_big-photo

[Jim O'Bryan]

Mike

It is a combination of many, many things. Top of the list, and it is the same for the Scene
is just horrible management. It has been painful watching them and other daily papers and
even weekly go through one bad decision after another.

It reminds me of the restaurant, that kicks off with extra large portions, extra servers,
extra hours, and the best ingredients. To slowly cut back on hours, quality, service, and
portions in a desperate tango to stay alive. You try to explain to them what they are doing
wrong, and they scoff and tell you the customer, you just don't understand, when in fact
you are the one they are trying to keep happy.

Also playing into the perfect storm, is Wall Street. Newspapers throughout were happy with
meager returns, as they were family run businesses that grew into the size they were, so
infact they were organic sustainable projects. Grown at the same rate as the city grew, and
common sense would say if they stayed to those dimensions, they could have been
sustainable. Then they caught Wall Street's ete, and with it the demand for higher and
higher returns as quickly as possible. Making the shareholder happier than the consumers,
staff was cut, budgets slashed, and the downward spiral starts. Next up was cutting the
very mainstays that made the product what it was. The long time reporters that were
making the most, so the biggest return was cutting them, losing more and more of the
very reason people pick up the paper for.

Then there was the internet. Large papers, and members of the "4th Estate" saw/see
themselves as the gate keepers of the truth. Through their very education they, and they
alone were trained to be unbiased, ask the right questions, and to be holders of all that
is right with the world. Infact they are nothing more than shills for the people paying the
bills and their own arrogance and ego. If you are the sports reporter for the Plain Dealer,
and you ask the wrong question or write that the Browns suck, there goes your credentials
and access, and there goes your career. So you are forced to shill. It is the same in a city
dare to question a mayor, council, planning director whoever where the money went? Why
was that chosen over this? and you find yourself on the outside very quickly being vilified
marginalized and ridiculed as "non-news." In Lakewood we saw this with the Westend
Project, with the 50-year-committee, the new library, and on and on and on. Those asking
the tough questions are outsiders, and those that shill for the man, are held up on high
and get the pipeline of "truth."

Through all of this, major media though that readers would understand ONLY THEY ARE
BELIEVABLE. Believing in their own arrogance and narcissistic attitude that only the gate
keepers will be believed and read. Oh well so much for that, not only has America thrown
away their need for the gate keepers, but critical thinkers now understand who are the
shills and who can be believed, or at least understood. Is the Channel 3 doctor where so
many get their health information or through any one of a thousand sources that also
include people they know and respect, and are not being paid to tell them anything. So
everyone becomes a reporter for at least 3 minutes now and then, and the truth is...

However, a city needs a daily paper as much as they need a baseball team, museum,
beach, basketball hoops, etc. It reminds me of a quote from the movie Tombstone, "yes
it makes the city very metropolitan." The difference between a town and a city. But does
the city even care, in a world of facebook, and desperately not wanting to know the facts?

We shall see.

.