Schumann's Cleveland Pages archives

This archive article is selected from The Cleveland Pages, the city's only weekly independent journal of politics and opinion on the Internet. Find out all about the Cleveland Pages here, or check out the current issue.

The Free Times, in an article no longer online, called Cleveland Pages "Spicily independent... in the best tradition of citizen-journalist."

The Cleveland Pages is a somewhat-weekly commentary on what's new and why it's all happening in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. If what you read here is upsetting, you might prefer this simple-minded happy-talk instead.

Bookmark the Cleveland Pages at http://re.cleveland.oh.us. Bookmark this issue at http://re.cleveland.oh.us/archives/20000107.html.

A Cleveland Pages archive search will be available soon... Meanwhile, skip to the flat-file archive list! And read an overview of who's putting this thing out and what it's about.

Crain's "gets it"! (09 January 2000)

I never thought I'd see this. Just a few weeks after my tongue-in-cheek fake press release by Mike White, the only Cleveland newspaper even friendlier to the big-corporate agenda than the Plain Dealer is comes up with something eerily similar in intent albeit less sarcastic in tone.

Mark Dodosh, editor of Crain's Cleveland Business, in a commentary piece this week, says directly that the emphasis on "cooperation" we've had between big business and local government has gotten out of hand, and that criticism of that agenda has been suppressed in an unnatural way. (To find the article online, go to Crain's search page and search for too darn polite.) But let Dodosh speak for himself:

[W]orking together in Cleveland has taken on a Stepford Wives quality to it, where you're viewed as a heretic or troublemaker--or both--if you disagree strongly in public with another member of the team. Heaven forbid other parts of the country see dissension in the ranks of the Comeback City. Can the Cleveland jokes be far behind?

He gets it. Mark Dodosh really gets it!

Every political hack here, from Voinovich and Taft on down to half of City Council, still uses the default and Cleveland jokes line every time they're questioned about ongoing abuses of public trust. Every cheap columnist, from Feagler to Crain's own publisher Brian Tucker, goes all patriotic and gushy-mouthed about the need to protect the free income flows of land speculators and influence pushers from the ugly, contentious democratic process.

Whether it's excusing the football stadium's black budget or shrugging off Mike White's numerous violations of the Open Records Act as a personality quirk, the mainstream media have been worse than useless. TV newsheads have happy little scripted comments after every pro-big-business news story. The Plain Dealer runs uncritical front-page news articles about each new big-ticket tax project and allows promoters to get away with hand-waving over the costs.

The problem is that local media see themselves as members of that team Dodosh talks about. Dodosh does too. Heck, the Plain Dealer actually helped fund pro-stadium campaigns.

In other cities, it's common for civic-image referenda to receive media coverage as though they were sports events; Joanna Cagan cites a San Francisco Examiner article titled 49ers drive toward goal as clock ticks down as an example. That's cheerleading not reportage. It plays on our cultural impulse to root for the home team... even as it portrays taxpayers as the opponent!

Crain's, an otherwise pretty decent rag, seems to have taken the first step towards awareness. The next thing they need to do is to recognize that journalism is the exact opposite of being on the big-business team, even when you're the local business paper.

When will the Plain Dealer catch on?

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