Remaining Staff at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer Prohibited from Covering Cleveland – Subscription Insider

Wait, what? You read that headline correctly. Just daysafter The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Ohioslargest newspaper, laid off 22 newsroom employees, the remaining 14 employeesreceived more bad news. They have been prohibited from reporting on Cleveland,Cuyahoga County and Summit County, as well as any statewide news, reportsCleveScene.com. Those regions will now be covered by sister publication,Cleveland.com, a non-union shop. If the remaining newsroom employees want tokeep their jobs, they will be restricted to covering Geauga, Lake, Lorain,Medina and Portage Counties, other counties in northeast Ohio, instead of beatstheyve covered for years.

The Plain Dealer Newspaper Guild, representing the union, spokeout on Facebook on April 7 about this latest blow to a once-respected mediaoutlet. The post received 634 reactions, 274 comments and 770 shares, as of 8:30p.m. Eastern yesterday. Here is an excerpt:

The Plain Dealer newsroom will no longer be coveringCleveland, Cuyahoga County or the state of Ohio.

Editor Tim Warsinskey announced Monday to the 14 remainingstaff members that the newsroom would, with a few exceptions, become a bureaucovering five outlying counties: Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Portage.

The move would bar most of the reporters from coveringstories in Cuyahoga and Summit counties, as well as statewide issues, wherethey have developed expertise and have institutional knowledge.

This latest announcement comes as the newsroom has workedceaselessly in covering this unprecedented pandemic, putting aside their ownpersonal family and financial situations to cover the news and tell the storiesof health care workers and the community

Warsinskey called the move a company-wide strategydecision. He did not say which company.

The Plain Dealer, which is owned by Advance Publications,consistently has maintained that The Plain Dealer and Advance Local, areseparate companies. Advance Local operates the nonunion Cleveland.com newsroom,which has not announced layoffs.

The two-newsroom operation was never going to becometenable or permanent, Warsinskey told staffers.

In effect, he is admitting that this decision is part of abroader move to eliminate The Plain Dealer and its staff altogether and not anattempt to provide meaningful coverage on areas the company has stoppedreporting on in any depth for years. The announcement comes three days afterThe Plain Dealer laid off 22 people in the newsroom, including 18Guild-represented journalists and four nonunion managers.

Its clear that the company doesnt value the expertise ofits veteran reporters and it doesnt think the community does either, said thepost. Readthe complete post on Facebook.

In another interesting move, last night, there were nostories on The Plain Dealers website. There were scrolling photos, but noarticles. A Google search directed us to Cleveland.com/plaindealer,but there was no link to that site from PlainDealer.com that we could find.

It is not clear if this move was intentional, or perhaps atechnical glitch. It seems to foreshadow what is coming. Cleveland.com willtake over news reporting for what used to be the biggest paper in the state.Meanwhile, Cleveland.com looked like this. It contained Cleveland-based storieswith bylines from Cleveland.com reporters.

The Plain Dealers editor TimWarsinskey shared The Plain Dealers position with News 5 Cleveland on thechanges:

There are two separate, but related, newsrooms inCleveland, and two outstanding news products The Plain Dealer andcleveland.com. Together, they serve the market well with The Plain Dealerstories appearing online at cleveland.com and cleveland.com stories appearingin print in The Plain Dealer, an approach that has been in place since separatenewsrooms were established in 2013.

By design, this approach helps provide thoughtful, impactfulcoverage in the most efficient way possible and ensures that Greater Clevelandhas more access to local journalism via digital platforms as demand for thoseplatforms continues to grow.

Today, there are 77 journalists and content creators inthese newsrooms covering Greater Cleveland, doing outstanding reporting,writing stories and creating content that our readers want and deserve. Thisnumber is comparable to the staffs in similarly-sized metro areas in Ohio andacross the country. But its not just about the numbers of journalists we haveon hand. Its how they are deployed to create a broad base of coverage for allof the communities we serve in Greater Cleveland.

On Monday, The Plain Dealer shared a new reporting focuswith the members of its newsroom, one that offers to bring high quality localjournalism to five counties in Greater Cleveland, and the nearly 1 millionpeople who live in them. Lake, Geauga, Portage, Medina and Lorain counties havebeen underserved by media in this market for years despite making up a largepercentage of The Plain Dealers subscription base.

The Plain Dealer, along with our sister companyCleveland.com, has an opportunity to change that with The Plain Dealers newfocus on these five nearby counties. This broadening of our coverage area isespecially important in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when all ofour readers, regardless of where they live, deserve to know how the virus isaffecting their local communities and how their local communities areresponding, Warsinskey said. Readthe full statement on News 5 Cleveland.

Cutting staff at a time when local journalism is more importantthan ever seems ludicrous, even if financially necessary. This latest move, however,makes absolutely no sense. Why would a media organization take skilledreporters with well-honed beats and move them to a bureau-type operation thatno longer reports news from the newspapers largest coverage area? It is almostunfathomable. We understand the guilds frustration and can only imagine how newspapersubscribers feel. It seems like Warsinskey and Advance Publications are notgiving the full story here. From the outside, it looks like they are cutting unionstaff and hoping the remaining staff will hate their plight so much that theywill leave voluntarily without a buyout or a mass firing. That would free thecompany up to transition to a digital model with non-union staff.

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Remaining Staff at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer Prohibited from Covering Cleveland - Subscription Insider