By Beacon Journal staff report
POSTED on Ohio.Com at 01:16 p.m. EDT, Aug 14, 2007
Akron Beacon Journal sports columnist Terry Pluto has announced his resignation from the newspaper after 22 years.
He has accepted a similar position with the Plain Dealer in Cleveland.
Pluto's last day with the Beacon Journal is expected to be Aug. 31.
‘‘It comes down to being able to perhaps finish my career for the paper that I grew up reading. I am a Clevelander,’’ said Pluto, who graduated from Cleveland Benedictine High School and Cleveland State University.
The Plain Dealer has a larger circulation than the Beacon Journal, which Pluto cited as his primary reason for making the change.
Pluto worked for the Plain Dealer from late 1979 to mid 1984 as the Indians beat writer. After a brief stint at a newspaper in Georgia, he joined the Beacon Journal as the Cavaliers beat writer in 1985. He became the newspaper's columnist in 1993 and has won numerous writing awards.
‘‘I just want to thank everyone who has been so tremendous to me in my 22 years at the ABJ,’’ Pluto said. ‘‘I will miss the people the most. This paper jump-started my career when it was stalled, allowed me to grow as a writer and a person.’’
Pluto said he would not have left the Beacon Journal for any other daily newspaper.
‘‘This allows me to live in the same house and cover the same teams,’’ he said.
Beacon Journal Editor Bruce Winges said: ‘‘This decision is not about Terry being unhappy at the Beacon Journal. It is more about Terry seeing an opportunity to reach a wider audience, and to reach that audience in the city and region that he knows best ` Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.
‘‘We will miss Terry greatly and wish him well.’’
Winges said the search for a new columnist will begin immediately.
Terry Pluto has been a sports columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal since 1985. He has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation's top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers. He is an eight-time winner of the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year award and has received more than 50 state and local writing awards. In 2005 he was inducted into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame. He is the author of 23 books, including The Curse of Rocky Colavito (selected by the New York Times as one of the five notable sports books of 1989), False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail, and Loose Balls, which was ranked number 13 on Sports Illustrated's list of the top 100 sports books of all time. He was called “Perhaps the best American writer of sports books,” by the Chicago Tribune in 1997.
Blogger Note: By 8:30 p.m. there were 49 comments on this post at Ohio.com
4 comments:
I really hope Winges gives a nice, long look at Marla Ridenour. She's quietly always done excellent work covering the Buckeyes and golf and being the second Browns reporter. She's a heck of a journalist who has earned a gig like that.
Marla does a great job with Browns and Ohio State coverage for the Beacon. I would like to see her also.
Terry Pluto, Jane Snow and Mark Dawidziak, I felt, were the three best writers at the Beacon Journal. All three were known nationally. When Terry leaves, all three will be gone, Mark and Terry at the PD.
Now the BJ has become a stepping stone for the Plain Dealer. I think I know more people in the PD newsroom than I do in the BJ newsroom.
Bob Dyer and Mark Price have a staggering burden to shoulder to try to restore the BJ to its illustrious writers past.
John, by singling out the few whom you consider to be the best writers at the Beacon Journal, you slapped the faces of those of us who are still committed to giving the ABJ's readers our best. Perhaps you did it unintentionally, but you need to know how much your comments hurt. Yes, Bob Dyer and Mark Price are fine writers, but I hardly think they're alone in that regard. It's one thing to decry budgetary and personnel cuts; it's quite another to insult those who are left to pick up the pieces. I don't expect readers to be able to make that distinction, but I certainly expect my former colleagues to.
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