By R.T. Andrews

Republished from The Real Deal Press

If you are going to be scooped on your own story, it’s likely best when a friend does it.

There is so much happening of grisly consequence these days — from the health, economic and civic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and the absolutely horrendous response thereto by so many of our leaders on every level; to what has quickly shaped up to the largest public corruption scheme in Ohio history; to the quiet federal invasion of our city; to the ongoing crises in city administration; to the sense of possibility that exists in this moment of racial recalibration — we might be forgiven for failing to report on a couple of matters right in our backyard.

The first of these neighborhood items is captured in this piece by Jay Miller, longtime Crain’s reporter, and one of a dwindling core of Cleveland journalists possessed of institutional memory. The local daily newspaper, the Plain Dealer, died unceremoniously a few months ago, intentionally deprived by its absentee owner over several years of the resources it needed to sustain and reinvent itself. For the moment, its shell is being inhabited by cleveland.com, a digital news site that currently uses the PD nameplate to imply a false continuity with a bygone era. [It’s reminiscent of when the Modell Browns slunk off to Baltimore; the NFL team’s records and colors stayed behind, but the replacement squad that arrived a few years later still bears no resemblance to the original.] Continue reading