Plain Dealer's editor-in-chief announces departure (Cleveland, Washington: how much, utilities, income)

[WRnative]

George Rodrique, the Plain Dealer's editor-in-chief, says adios.


An interesting comment:


<<A business recruiter once told me, “It’s hard to get people to come to Cleveland, and even harder to get them to leave.” I get that.>>


https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/...-the-city.html


Tim Warsinskey, the new editor-in-chief, appears to have a sports journalism background. By contrast, Rodrigue was a Pulitzer Price-winning journalist.


I'm not certain about Warsinskey's political mindset, but hopefully it doesn't closely resemble that of the PD's Ted Diadiun, a columnist and member of the cleveland.com editorial board who also had a sports journalism background before moving up the ranks.


https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/20...d-diadiun.html

[mbowes80]

Originally Posted by WRnative

Tim Warsinskey, the new editor-in-chief, appears to have a sports journalism background. By contrast, Rodrigue was a Pulitzer Price-winning journalist.

That sounds about right based on what PD/Cleveland.com seems to focus on.

If I were a local news outlet trying to survive in the digital era, I would go all-in on regional news. It's flatly impossible that the PD can cover national news better than NYT or whatever, but they can definitely cover local news of all sorts (including sports) better. They should just ditch all non-regional news.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by mbowes80

That sounds about right based on what PD/Cleveland.com seems to focus on.

If I were a local news outlet trying to survive in the digital era, I would go all-in on regional news. It's flatly impossible that the PD can cover national news better than NYT or whatever, but they can definitely cover local news of all sorts (including sports) better. They should just ditch all non-regional news.

The problem is that national news has important local ramifications not obvious if just reading the NY Times or Washington Post.


E.g., FEMA provides massive subsidies to utilities after hurricanes and other storms in Florida, Texas, etc. Hundreds of billions to rebuild infrastructure. FL and TX pay little and have NO state income taxes.


Meanwhile, Ohio gets relatively little for utilities and infrastructure and we must pay are own way. The same for Lake Erie erosion projects versus beach replenishment and sea level rise protection versus coastal states. None of this is reported to northeast Ohio citizens by any of our news media, let alone the PD/Cleveland.com/Sun Newspaper near monopoly.


So we elect Congressional representatives who happily acquiesce to Ohio being a vassal state to the coastal states.


The news media now is reporting about how northeast Ohio residents can't afford their utility bills, but never examine the federal issue of disparate division of resources for infrastructure expenditures, including utilities.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by WRnative

So we elect Congressional representatives who happily acquiesce to Ohio being a vassal state to the coastal states.

I guess the more accurate term to describe Ohio's relationship to coastal states is "tributary" state.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by WRnative

I guess the more accurate term to describe Ohio's relationship to coastal states is "tributary" state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_state

[kpl1228]

I wonder how much of a free-fall the PD is in, given the condition of large national dailies. Watching from a distance, the PD indeed seems rudderless.
While not dynamic, Brett Larkin had such a solid hold on his paper as editor and as the face of the paper and also of journalism in Cleveland large-scale, and agree with his editorials or not, I'd also say that we have not a newspaperman like him since Louis Seltzer. Since Larkin retired, the paper seems to be drifting from one "temporary" captain to the next.