The Observation Deck

Ladies and Gentlemen as the Lakewood Observer celebrates its 10th year it's more important now than ever before that we support those businesses that support FREE SPEECH in Lakewood. Specifically, those 42 businesses and organizations that advertised in this week's edition.

Your dollars matter, big and small.

Jim O'Bryan has said it time and time again. The Observer is a for-profit community newspaper he owns that's put together entirely by volunteers who don't get paid a red cent.

Without the unpaid volunteers we have nothing. Without the paid advertisements we have nothing.

Have Slife check out your furnance. Get a pizza from Nunzio's. Open a checking account at First Federal.

Just remember you can vote with your dollars. Maybe your side lost the election, but the election for your dollars never ends. So, get out there and keep voting.

The more dollar signs means the bigger the Observer ad.

$$$$ Slife Heating & Cooing
$$$ Westshore Midwifery Associates
$$$ Trinty Cathedral
$$$ O'Neill Healthcare
$$$ Massage Green
$$$ LakewoodAlive
$$$ First Federal Lakewood
$$$ Cuyahoga Community College
$$$ Cox Business
$$$ Carl Lishing Insurance
$$ Wm E Donnelly Heating and Cooling
$$ West End Tavern
$$ The Root Café
$$ Rozi's
$$ Nunzio's Pizzeria
$$ McGown Markling
$$ Lion and Blue
$$ Lakewood Seventh Day Adventist Church
$$ Keller Williams
$$ Fedor Manor
$$ Daniel J's Salon
$$ Dance Lakewood
$$ Casey's Irish Imports
$$ Berkshire Hathaway Home Services
$$ Beck Center
$$ Around the Corner
$$ Achieve Fitness Store
$ Wired Right
$ The Yardist Lawn & Garden Services
$ St. James Anglican Church
$ Rent A Husbad
$ Pepper's Italian Restaurant
$ Neubert Painting
$ Lakewood Republican Club
$ Lakewood Is Art
$ Lakewood Chamber
$ Italian Creations
$ Home Alone Pet Sitting
$ Georgetown
$ Carabel Beauty Salon
$ Allure Painting
$ AGS Printwear

you are nuts.

all are Lakewood businesses. all deserve patronage.

should you be boycotted because you post here? no more awards?

sorry manuel. misread your post.

patronize them all.

you are still nuts.

Pasquale,

Great post.

As I have pointed out before, the true measure of leadership is "influence."

Jim O'Bryan continues to influence you to make thought provoking posts here and that is a testament to Jim's fine leadership in this all important project.

Jim, the LO, the Deck will continue to lead Lakewood in the search for the truth on all important issues while having fun too.

Keep the posts coming, but remember "resentment is the poison we drink hoping the other person gets sick."

We need you to stay healthy if we are to become "The Healthiest City in America!!!"

The LO and the Deck are clearly key to the mental health of our City.

Doctor Jim,

Thanks for all you do for Lakewood!

Pasquale Manno wrote:
Jim O'Bryan has said it time and time again. The Observer is a for-profit community newspaper he owns that's put together entirely by volunteers who don't get paid a red cent.

Without the unpaid volunteers we have nothing. Without the paid advertisements we have nothing.

Pasquale

You are a newby, so let me point out, I am sure I never said that.

There is a paid staff. There are expenses, and volunteers often benefit from other aspects of the Observer project..

Deb and Jim O'Bryan have never received pay checks, or a salary. Though the LO does pay for some of my gas, and an occasional lunch meeting, if it has to do with Lakewood and the Observer.

There are state laws regarding for profit businesses using volunteers, and back after the George, Demro, FitzGerald election, a disgruntled person reported us to the Attorney General, and we were audited, and found to be 100% compliant with the laws of the State of Ohio.

We looked at non-profit, and thought we saw issues with elections and election laws, so we chose a For-Profit model, that is responsible to the needs of the community.

Would hate to see untruth spread about this project.

.

While I agree it is good to support the Observer's advertisers, I would hope they derive benefit from their ads from the exposure to the publication's readership. Some may advertise out of commitment to the project, others out of a personal relationship, but in a perfect world, all would be doing it because it helps them build their business or organization. But it's not a perfect world and the results of ads are notoriously hard to track, so a post like this is helpful.

Regardless of the absolute facts, which Jim is obligated to straighten out, it's a great post and a great point. Openness and free speech are at the heart of this project, and so much of what's needed in the city.

I found this quote from my communications consultant friend Peter Sandman among his online posts/opinions he dispenses for free (psandman.com) This one really hit home:

"People tell me it’s cynical to believe that trust in organizations is intrinsically unsustainable. I disagree. In fact, it’s a bedrock principle of democracy that governments can’t be trusted – that a vigilant citizenry is a precondition for good government, and that a trusting citizenry is a recipe for tyranny. And it’s a bedrock principle of capitalism (modern regulated capitalism, at least) that profit-making institutions shouldn’t be trusted either. It’s not a new idea, or a cynical one, that all institutions (even religious institutions) tend in time to abuse trust, and therefore need to be closely monitored."

Paul Schrimpf wrote:Regardless of the absolute facts, which Jim is obligated to straighten out, it's a great post and a great point. Openness and free speech are at the heart of this project, and so much of what's needed in the city.

I found this quote from my communications consultant friend Peter Sandman among his online posts/opinions he dispenses for free (psandman.com) This one really hit home:

"People tell me it’s cynical to believe that trust in organizations is intrinsically unsustainable. I disagree. In fact, it’s a bedrock principle of democracy that governments can’t be trusted – that a vigilant citizenry is a precondition for good government, and that a trusting citizenry is a recipe for tyranny. And it’s a bedrock principle of capitalism (modern regulated capitalism, at least) that profit-making institutions shouldn’t be trusted either. It’s not a new idea, or a cynical one, that all institutions (even religious institutions) tend in time to abuse trust, and therefore need to be closely monitored."

Paul

I would go step further. No one is obligated to do anything here.

I have put together a panel of people that have found fault with this project, over the past 6 months, to look at what we were trying to do, and what we should do in the future. They span residents from Heidi Hilty, a founder of the project, to Tom Wagner (Observer didn't print this cartoon), to others that have called for all sorts of moderation and changes. We also have a couple members from public institutions we serve.

Paul, I would be interested in where we betrayed trust? I would also ask, if you are bringing the questions here, why not elsewhere, where the owner, publishers, and writers rarely enter the fray to discuss what they do and why. I always find it fascinating, that people seem to focus mistrust here, instead of the places where content is deleted, managed or spooned out through fake names. But then, if you asked the same questions there they would be deleted.

Show me where the LO has abused the trust of anyone?

.

Jim, Thanks for pointing this out, when I first read Mr. Schrimpf's post I automatically assumed that the quote pertained to the Summers' administration.

"People tell me it’s cynical to believe that trust in organizations is intrinsically unsustainable. I disagree. In fact, it’s a bedrock principle of democracy that governments can’t be trusted – that a vigilant citizenry is a precondition for good government, and that a trusting citizenry is a recipe for tyranny. And it’s a bedrock principle of capitalism (modern regulated capitalism, at least) that profit-making institutions shouldn’t be trusted either. It’s not a new idea, or a cynical one, that all institutions (even religious institutions) tend in time to abuse trust, and therefore need to be closely monitored."

What a great quote. First and foremost: A vigilant citizenry is a precondition for good government, and a trusting citizenry is a recipe for tyranny.

What process can the citizenry use to be vigilant? How can they know what’s happening? They must pay attention, they must observe, and when they do, how can they share it?

That quote could be on the masthead of the Observer paper every week.

This quote could be used also: It’s not a new idea that institutions tend in time to abuse trust, and therefore need to be closely monitored.

That sounds like a mayor driving without a license… Hey! What happened?! Where were we? I guess we were too trusting.

It’s not easy to be vigilant. It’s not easy to monitor. Most people are busy, they have jobs, families, and very full lives. Even if they want to be vigilant, and be good active interested citizens, how do they do it?

A place where they could write whatever they want, send it in and see it published so other citizens could see it and start a discussion would be a good thing to have.

Very few cities have what we have.

When I was getting very frustrated a couple of weeks ago, I talked to someone older with a lot more experience and perspective than me (my dad) and he said, “You don’t know how lucky you are that you live in a community where so many people are paying attention and so many people care." Usually the problem is that nobody knows what’s going on. There’s not two sides to a story, a lot of times there’s not even one side to a story, there is no side, no-one knows what’s going on and institutions rumble on doing whatever they want, and sharing whatever their public relations department puts out.

Or a person, a resident, a citizen, is very concerned but feels alone in his opinion and feels powerless. What can one person do?

The internet has given people more access to each other, we have seen distractions (“What color is this dress?”) sweep the country in less than an hour on Facebook, or movements like the ice bucket challenge raise thousands of dollars as people talk to each other, or at least at each other.

There has been talk about internet abuse in these threads, fake names, people writing things and then removing them on FB and other sites, sites blocking people altogether whose opinions they don’t like.

The Deck rules are good ones. The first one is that you have to be a real person, with your own verifiable name, to post. You have 15 minutes to edit your post after you put it up, in case you regret what you said, or spelled things wrong, or changed your mind about posting. The point isn’t for people to embarrass themselves. The point is that once you’ve settled on your post, it’s there, and it won’t be deleted, ever. It has become part of our living history, as Ken Warren might describe it. If you change your mind, write another post and say that you changed your mind. If you’re sorry, say you’re sorry. If you meant every darned bit of it and, after seeing what other posters had to say about what you said, you mean it even more, go ahead and say it again, and maybe say it better. Or my favorite thing, someone else comes in to comment about what you said, and explains it even more clearly than you did and you learn something new.

But the part of the project I like best, and thought of first when I read the quote above about citizen vigilance, was the paper. It’s free, you can get it anywhere, you don't need to have a computer, and you can submit stories online, in the mail, or by walking them through the door of the Observer office. Unlike the internet, the paper sticks around. You can read a story again, you can cut it out and put it on your refrigerator, especially the photos. You can say what you want, and if anybody else reading it wants to respond, they can do that in the next issue. For free. In that way we can be vigilant and do our best to take care of our institutions and each other. We have a tool, and a process, that allows us to try to be good citizens.

Betsy Voinovich

Mr. Manno, Thank you for that list. I was wondering if you could provide us with a comparable list of businesses that supported Build Lakewood ? I think it would be great to spread the wealth. Based on an earlier post by Mr. Wadden I could start us off...

1) Cotton/ Plantation Home.

2) Deagen's

3) Mahall's

4) Rozi's-( which has the unique distinction of appearing on both lists and thus should be doubly blessed).

Here's a better idea, how about we dispense with lists Mr. Manno and everyone just go about supporting local businesses as they have in the past. I don't think we need a field guide for that.

I WAS talking about the administration. I really thought that was obvious.

Good night...

Paul,
I got it.