http://www.wkyc.com/news/article/283453/45/Perspec tive-Tom-Beres-turning-the-page-on-the-Plain-Deale r

WKYC is trying to save its fellow media, but I don't think it's gonna work. And besides, most of the reporters have gone to the Dark Side (i.e. PR/communications). Better futures.

"Saving the Plain Dealer" apparently is not worthy of the same campaign that "Save the Browns" or "Save DFAS Jobs" crusades became, despite the fact jobs are also at stake, and even mustering a "Fly the United Hub" effort seems out of the question.

The Plain Dealer is owned by the Newhouse family and is privately held. Since the owners live out of state, there's no chance to appeal to hometown loyalty and there are no other big stockholders to plead with.

The Newspaper Guild, a union for newsroom staffers, has been waging a media and educational campaign about the threat to the quantity and quality of journalism a downsized paper would produce.

But a city and a region accustomed to putting up a good fight for worthy causes is accepting an expected big loss and big change as unavoidable digital "progress" with little more than a collective shrug and yawn.

Problem is, the Guild does not have a great PR campaign. I have yet to hear radio or see TV ads about the PD, other than a billboard on I-71. Also, you can tell that this article is slanted in favor of the PD...

"Saving the PD is apparently not worthy..."

Idiots. All of them. I'm surprised WKYC-3 is backing the PD. They compete for the same customers.

If you've never noticed, you seem a touch fixated with & critical of the PD, kts. ; )  Is there a reason for this, besides them never hiring you?

I'm pretty indifferent to the PD, but I'd certainly never celebrate its demise, either.  The internet swallowing up newspapers isn't exactly my idea of change for the better.  

I get the vast majority of my news from whatever Google News deems worthy--unfortunately, I don't think any of this is based on my internet history or personal preferences.  They at least seem to insist that I care about reality TV, despite my being pretty damn sure that I don't.  Anyway, the stuff I read on Google News generally comes from newspapers, as far as I can tell, and I don't know if the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Washington Post, etc-sourced material could survive the loss of its print publication.  

And the day we get to the point where all internet news is sourced the way Yahoo! news stories are...that is not a good day.

Am I wrong to think that the end of the PD would represent one more step in the direction of this end?  Or is the success or failure of the PD completely irrelevant to the kinds of newspapers I mentioned above?

Why do newspapers still print? Everyone knows it's a dying industry; they should focus all of their resources to online media.

Newspapers may likely (and are)  dying a similar death that small businesses experienced with the advent of big box discounters like WM,Lowes,etc.

With big internet companies like Google playing the part of the big box retailers. Google has been gobbling up ad companies like crazy,for years. Seems that most papers (particularly smaller ones)  are at a disadvantage. The challenge was not just changing their business model, it had/has to be totally redefined. 

Wouldn't surprise me to see the government step in eventually and use these papers failures, as an excuse to start taxing internet usage more. Not only has the exchange of 
information and business model become obselete,
advertising revenue, once a major source of revenue for papers, has likely decreased with the decline in subscriptions ,and alternative vehicles businesses use  to reach consumers.

CanadiansforBrowns wrote: Why do newspapers still print? Everyone knows it's a dying industry; they should focus all of their resources to online media.

Believe it or not, there is still a segment of the population that does not have a computer and is not on line.

Granted, that segment skews toward lower income households and the elderly.  Unfortunately as it continues to shrink it reaches a tipping point where newspapers can no longer sustain with the subscriptions of those people alone.

The sad thing is that as news outlets become fewer and fewer, our ability to know what is really going on becomes more limited and subject to the editorial slant of fewer minds.

I personally try to get news from as many places as I can.  CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Guardian UK, The Telegraph, WSJ, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Weekly Standard, Fortune, Huffington Post, The Blaze.  I often let Google News pick a sampling for me as well to avoid falling into a rut of limited selections.

Every one of those will usually present a nugget of truth, but less than the full picture.  I try to take "keyhole" shots from many places to try to assemble the big picture.  It's actually more work than most people want to do and it does cause you to read through stuff that is philisophically opposed to your personal ethic but it is probably the only way to get anything close to the "whole truth".

bwwyyyy wrote: If you've never noticed, you seem a touch fixated with & critical of the PD, kts. ; )  Is there a reason for this, besides them never hiring you?

I have met their staffers and wanted to work there, but they never hired me. Some of their staffers are really nice (Lubinger, Brett, etc.) and some were meh (Schultz). I wasn't good enough for them. And, while my writing is not *great*, it certainly is good enough to at least get an entry-level position there. And I had a good pedigree and good clips from Kent State, plus an internship at the Youngstown Vindicator in 2005. Instead, I wound up at a weekly for 5.5 years. That was not a horrible job but it was not the daily I so wanted...

I'm pretty indifferent to the PD, but I'd certainly never celebrate its demise, either.  The internet swallowing up newspapers isn't exactly my idea of change for the better.  

I get the vast majority of my news from whatever Google News deems worthy--unfortunately, I don't think any of this is based on my internet history or personal preferences.  They at least seem to insist that I care about reality TV, despite my being pretty damn sure that I don't.  Anyway, the stuff I read on Google News generally comes from newspapers, as far as I can tell, and I don't know if the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Washington Post, etc-sourced material could survive the loss of its print publication.  

And the day we get to the point where all internet news is sourced the way Yahoo! news stories are...that is not a good day.

I agree with you there.

Am I wrong to think that the end of the PD would represent one more step in the direction of this end?  Or is the success or failure of the PD completely irrelevant to the kinds of newspapers I mentioned above?

You are not wrong in that regard. I think the success of a daily is dependent on quality writing, good ads and non-biased reporting. To the PD's credit, Grossi is gone. I actually think Grossi is a good writer WHEN he wants to be. But, like Shaun Rogers, he took too many plays off and rubbed too many people the wrong way. Kudos to Randy and the Browns org. for getting him booted, even though those asshats on Romenesko (journalism insider blog) were pissing and moaning about it. Tony *was* irrelevant, but in fairness lately he's had some decent stuff. That being said, I'm not even sure *how* he got the ESPN job, unless they were THAT desperate.

The death of the PD is a long process that started many years ago when The Cleveland Press, their only true competitor, closed up shop.  Lacking a competitor, the quality of the PD quickly faded.  Now they have plenty of competition, but little quality and integrity to fall back on.

The PD bought out the Cleveland Press, they just didn't close up shop. Some of the people that worked at the Cleveland Press went over to the News Herald, which is basically an east side paper mostly covering Lake County and the eastern burgs.

GoBrowns32 wrote: The death of the PD is a long process that started many years ago when The Cleveland Press, their only true competitor, closed up shop.  Lacking a competitor, the quality of the PD quickly faded.  Now they have plenty of competition, but little quality and integrity to fall back on.

^ To their own demise, I submit.

Yes I agree.

GoBrowns32 wrote: ^ To their own demise, I submit.

The "Save the Plain Dealer" campaign can only be successful if there's some conceivable long-term way that the Plain Dealer would be able to sustain a profit with the levels of employees they currently have. There isn't. There simply isn't. 

There's no "happy ending", here, only a campaign that seems to be telling Newhouse that the only civically responsible thing they can do is continue to bleed red ink.

The public isn't blase about "Save the Plain Dealer" because we don't care about quality journalism. The public is blase about it because saving a 1980 level of newspaper staffing in the 2013 business environment is a lost cause. And they know it. 

It's really insulting to Clevelanders to suggest that it's a lack of civic responsibility or concern about quality journalism that's behind the weak embrace of the "Save the Plain Dealer" campaign.

Perhaps Clevelanders aren't massing behind it because they actually understand a thing or two about how business actually works in, you know, the real world.

BarryMcBride wrote: The "Save the Plain Dealer" campaign can only be successful if there's some conceivable long-term way that the Plain Dealer would be able to sustain a profit with the levels of employees they currently have. There isn't. There simply isn't. 

There's no "happy ending", here, only a campaign that seems to be telling Newhouse that the only civically responsible thing they can do is continue to bleed red ink.

The public isn't blase about "Save the Plain Dealer" because we don't care about quality journalism. The public is blase about it because saving a 1980 level of newspaper staffing in the 2013 business environment is a lost cause. And they know it. 

It's really insulting to Clevelanders to suggest that it's a lack of civic responsibility or concern about quality journalism that's behind the weak embrace of the "Save the Plain Dealer" campaign.

Perhaps Clevelanders aren't massing behind it because they actually understand a thing or two about how business actually works in, you know, the real world.

They aren't doing a good job promoting their cause, regardless. The Union is not really geared up for doing PR/advertising work of their cause (saving the PD); for better or for worse, they should just stick to negotiations with the management.

Some of my friends worked there and are gone. It was a hellhole there apparently.

Maybe some of the PD drivers can go work for the Post Office.

There are too many free sources of "headline" news for anyone to successfully compete against with a fee model.  The WSJ has successfully transitioned to a fee based  system and the do that by providing information beyond what CNN and the other free news organizations provide.  The NYT is trying to do the same and I've read speculation the the Washington Post is going to try it as well.  I believe other news organizations will need to act similarly or they will simply wither away like the PD.

Never thought Id see the day Lynchburg VA has a daily paper and Cleveland doesn't.

Makes me sad that our town is drying up.

good point max.

also, with big media, it is a pointless exercise in trying to contact them, as they never respond to the public. WHY BOTHER EVEN LISTING THEIR EMAILS on the websites if they will not get responses? You might as well regulate the media and have the reporters cut off contact with their readers at that point.

Well, one would say "they're busy!" But..with the PD, most of the reporters do 4-5 stories a week, about what I did at the weekly. I was able to respond to most emails within 24 hours and all emails within 72 hours of receiving them.

granted, they do have a daily deadline, but at the same time, if you're only doing 4-5 a week that's one story a day and it shouldn't take you too long to do that.

I contacted Mary Kay and told her she did a great article recently. When she is on, she is not bad! No response.

Not all of them are horrid--Pluto has gotten back to me.

I think, as Cooper7 has pointed out, they think they are more important than they are. Remember his comment about how AP writer Tom Withers gets first chair at a press conference? (So petty). They worked their way from nothing to the PD, but are cynical because the world they've made for themselves is crashing down and they don't want to be one of the unwashed masses. That is what they fear, being brought down to the level of the common person.

Some of the best writers are also at non-union publications and magazines, rather than the old union print shops like the PD. It is not dissimilar to what happened with steel and manufacturing in this country.