10 at PD offer to leave

PD Guild members who summited their names to leave the PD are Guild president Ginger Christ, vice chair Rachel Dissell, Laura De Marco, John Petkovic, Greg Burnett, Phil Morris, Michelle Jarobe, photographers Gus Chan and Lisa DeJong and education writer Patrick O'Donnell.

The four electing to stay, all told they wouldn't be made bureau reporters and would continue with current duties, are sports columnist Terry Pluto, a former BJ sportswriter, Steve Litt, travel writer Susan Glaser and reporter John Caniglia.

Columnist Phil Morris, who also could have stayed, chose to leave.

It’s up to Newhouse’s Advance to announce their decisions in the ravaging of a PD newsroom that numbered 340 in 2000.

About a week ago PD management announced that 10 Guild members would be assigned to non-Cuyahoga County bureaus if they stayed.

 

This will move the PD closer to the Newhouse Advance goal of making the PD completely non-union. Cleveland.com has about 70 members, all non-union, and will replace the Guild members in handling what's left of PD coverage.

PD: Union card? Leave the county! Firing squad next? 

Newhouse Advance Publications has unveiled its latest union-busting tactic. 10 of the remain 14 Guild employees will be banished to out-lying county bureaus so that only non-union Cleveland.com workers can work in Cuyahoga County or Summit County.

The next step is obvious because it’s been done by management for a century: Put everyone you don’t want into a department or category, then a few months later eliminate the department or category. It’s capitalism version of the firing squad. No bullets needed.

Once the 10 are banished from Cuyahoga County the next step is to close down the PD bureaus in Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Portage counties. It’s coming. Count on it.

Those truncated ten might as well send out their job applications elsewhere. They are living on borrowed time.

With no union protection the final step also is obvious for those at Cleveland.com: Slash their pay. They’ll be lucky if they make minimum wages.

Putin couldn’t be more merciless and effective. At least there are no bullets in the PD firing squad.

The banished union members are investigative reporters Rachel Dissell and John Caniglia, arts and culture writers John Petkovic and Laura DeMarco,  real estate reporter Michelle Jarboe, medical reporter Ginger Christ, education reporter Patrick O'Donnell, features/Friday Magazine events writer Greg Burnett and photographers Gus Chan and Lisa DeJong.

The only exceptions, for now, are superb sports columnist Terry Pluto, once at 44 E. Exchange Street who writes a book a week, or so it seems, about sports; columnist Philip Morris; art and architecture critic Steve Litt; and travel writer Susan Glaser.

To read the excruciatingly painful Cleveland Scene article, click on https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2020/04/07/plain-dealer-put-out-to-pasture-in-final-death-blow-remaining-reporters-given-impossible-choice

30 days of Hell by America’s newspapers

In less than 30 days Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida (one of my stops in my 43-year newspaper career was at Poynter’s St. Petersburg Times) reported this cutbacks, print suspensions because the coronavirus and normal attrition that has been going on for years now collided:

On March 9, The Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer announced it would cut 22 newsroom employees.

On March 13, The Stranger in Seattle temporarily suspended print and laid off 18 staffers.

On March 14, the Portland (Oregon) Mercury announced it was temporarily cutting print and had temporarily laid off 10 staffers

On March 16, DigBoston suspended print publication.

on March 17, salaries were cut at the Phoenix New Times, Denver’s Westword, Dallas Observer, Houston Press and Miami New Times.

On March 18, the Tampa Bay Times, which Poynter owns, laid off 11 journalists

on March 18, Monterey County Weekly in California announced it had laid off seven employees. Three other staffers had salaries reduced

Texas’ San Antonio Current laid off 10 employees.

Riverfront Times in St. Louis laid off seven.

Shepherd Express in Milwaukee suspended its print edition.

The Pulse in Chattanooga, Tennessee, suspended publication.

CityBeat in Cincinnati, Ohio, had furloughs and pay cuts.

MetroTimes in Detroit laid off eight staffers. 

Creative Loafing in Tampa laid off seven employees.

Cleveland Scene in Ohio laid off five staffers.

Orlando Weekly laid off 13 people. 

Oklahoma Gazette in Oklahoma City paused print publication.

On March 19, Isthmus, a weekly in Madison, Wisconsin, announced it had to “go dark for an undetermined amount of time.”

On March 20, Austin Chronicle in Texas went to an every-other-week print schedule.

Mountain Xpress in Asheville, North Carolina, laid off seven and had pay cuts.

On March 23, Trent Stephens reported for The Durango (Colorado) Herald that it had laid off five people

on March 23, Trib Total Media in Pennsylvania combined two print editions and laid off staff

The Times-Picayune/nola.com/The Advocate in New Orleans announced a temporary furlough of 10% of its workforce.

On March 25, The Warwick Beacon in Rhode Island cut one publication day to become a weekly and had eight layoffs

On March 26th, the 13-year-old Waterbury (Vermont) Record reported it printed its last edition.

on March 30, the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, announced it’s cutting print on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday.

The Henrico Citizen in Henrico County, Virginia, announced it was stopping its twice-monthly print edition for April “and possibly beyond.”

Adams Publishing Group, which operates dailies and weeklies in 20 states, announced a cut in workforce hours

on March 31, The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, announced furloughs and pay cuts.

San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly announced cuts in hours and pay to staff.

On April 1, 22nd Century Media, which published community newspapers in the Chicago suburbs, went out of business,

On April 2 and 3, newsrooms that are part of Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group learned of layoffs and furloughs. Newsrooms include The Denver Post, the Boston Herald and several in California.

On April 6, Poynter’s Tom Jones reported temporary pay cuts at The Dallas Morning News.

This is just the Cliff’s Notes version. If you want to read the entire sorry report by Poynter, click on

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/here-are-the-newsroom-layoffs-furloughs-and-closures-caused-by-the-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR3glJ2eNZL-P-5oOwOH5FdK4lPvIX6y0hp3NBHscjDYSlDPVveC_2FDTdU

My advice to college journalism students: Not a good time to look for a newspaper job. Duh!

Retired BJ Circulation district manager Don Phillips passed away Wednesday, April 1.

Don was at 44 E. Exchange Street for 32 years. Before that he was in the Akron Police Department.

His sister, Sue, is married to Linc Hackim.

Hackims are legendary in Summit County sports.

The first Linc Hackim was the president of the American Amateur Baseball Congress for 17 years who brought its national headquarters to Fairlawn. He is in the Greater Akron Baseball Hall of Fame.

So was Linc Hackim, Jr., who was a Class AA minor league baseball all-star for 13 years.

Linc Hackim III also is in the GAB Hall of Fame and was on Akron A’s teams that won the Roy Hobbs World Series 3 times and helped his father, Linc, Jr., coach at Cuyahoga Falls, Hoban and St. Vincent/St. Mary’s.

I coached in the Dayton Amateur Baseball Association program with its president Dick Burrows. 

My award for my 40 years, off and on, of coaching children in baseball came from the Greater Akron Touchdown Club.

I was Class H (8-10 age group) president and Class G manager (11-12 age group) with the Cougars and later the Camaros for 11 years, then taught my grandson’s pitching staff later in life.

My other coaching years were in West Virginia where I founded and supervised the first baseball program that included children of color in Mingo County on the Tug River border with Kentucky and in Dayton.

In Cuyahoga Falls I spearheaded the integration of girls into the Cuyahoga Falls Amateur Baseball Association program, including Tammy who later was on the Green High girls softball team that made it to the state finals.

In 1987 I became one the first 10 people enshrined into the CFABA Hall of Fame.

Don is on a 1981 list of BJ employees that I have, along with Cleveland Phillips, no relation, who was in maintenance. Cleveland passed away in 2009.

Don’s obituary:

Donald J. Phillips died peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones after a short battle with pancreatic cancer on April 1st, 2020.

Don was born to Richard and Phyllis Phillips of Akron, OH on March 23rd, 1941. He was a graduate of Archbishop Hoban High School class of 1959. Don continued his education at the University of Akron. He joined the Akron Police Department in September of 1968, until the time came for a career change. He was recruited as a district manager for the Akron Beacon Journal until his retirement 32 years later.

Don was a compassionate, loving husband and a kind, patient father. He was a true outdoorsman. He enjoyed hunting, fishing, and camping with his family and friends over the years. Don was also a skilled marksman and an avid bowler. He always enjoyed a good cigar and a game of chess with any one of his grandchildren.

Don was preceded in death by his parents, Richard and Phyllis Phillips, and Troy Metzner, his son-in-law. He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Tricia E. (Osborne) Phillips; and their 4 children, Ellen (Phillips) Metzner of Conway, SC, James (Robyn) Phillips of Springfield Twp., OH, Sean (Janeen) Phillips of Brimfield Twp., OH, Matthew (Catherine) Phillips of Cuyahoga Falls, OH. Don is also survived by his sisters, Sue (Linc) Hackim, Nancy (Bob) Eggers and June (Jim) Meech; brothers-inlaw, Dave (Kate) Osborne, Thomas (Deborah) Osborne and many nieces and nephews.

Due to current health concerns, a celebration of life will be held at a later date.

Yaborough’s PD farewell column

A fond farewell

By Chuck Yarborough, who along with Mark Dawidziak was canned by the PD

 

This is the column I wasn’t able to publish.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In 1976, when I walked into the “newsroom” at the San Jacinto College Texian, I thought I was taking advantage of an offer to use the typewriters because I was too broke to afford one.

See, I didn’t have any money, and my father, a retired career Army officer who was REALLY pissed that I had turned down an appointment to West Point and a free education, wasn’t about to pay for me to go to some fancy-schmancy college. Enter San Jac, a junior college outside Houston.

I’d already tried and failed at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, where Dr. Bratton’s sonorous lectures about organic chemistry and my distinct lack of talent regarding same had doomed my dreams of thoracic surgery.

I was 0-1, and not feeling all that great about my chances. But at least I would have a means to write whatever term papers were required at tiny San Jac, which frankly was smaller than Parma Senior High, where my daughter graduated 22 years later.

But my first Mass Communications 1010 class made me realize that I had found more a place to practice on a QWERTY keyboard; I had found my calling. It led me through a chain of weeklies outside Houston, a tiny suburban daily, and four other newspapers in the Lone Star State, the last being the Houston Chronicle.

From the Chronk I went to what has become what I believe is the last stop on my newspaper career: The Plain Dealer.

As you know, the paper on Friday laid off 18 of the 32 remaining members of Local No. 1 of The Newspaper Guild. At 63 — and tired — I am one of them.

I won’t go into the internal politics of things here at The PD; that’s not the purpose of this column. What I want to do is say thank you to those of you who’ve opened your arms to me in your hometown . . . and pfffft!to the rest.

I learned tons at all my other papers, including how to design a newspaper, how to write headlines, how to screw up someone else’s copy (I don’t think legendary Chronicle columnist Leon Hale, a personal hero, has ever forgiven me for changing “etymology” to “entomology” in one of his pieces) and that I was not, not, NOT cut out to be management.

But it’s The Plain Dealer that has given me the greatest thrills of 42 years in this business, at least so far. To be honest, I have no idea what the future holds, beyond a few plans.

First off, I’m tired. I got my first paycheck job when I was 15, driving a fuel truck at Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport in Virginia, and I’ve been unemployed for exactly 24 hours since then. So I probably will spend at least 10 minutes resting before sitting down in front of a keyboard, because I’m a writer and writers write.

My hope is to do the book that everyone keeps urging on me, one that talks about everything from inviting the soldiers who were on garbage duty into our quarters for coffee and a warm-up in Fort Richardson, Alaska, as a 4-year-old, to doing pirouettes at just under Mach 1 in an FA/18 with the Blue Angels.

Naturally, I’ll rehash the 150 jobs I did for The Plain Dealer during the On the Job Training series — everything from washing front-end loaders to digging basement foundations to repairing tattered luggage to assisting in both a surgery and an autopsy (for the record, they were separate people).

And how could I not discuss talking to the musicians who were my heroes as a kid taking drum lessons at Davy Crockett Elementary School, and even beyond that? I’ve done interviews with every member of Yes, two of the three members of Rush (I missed out on the late Neil Peart!), fumbled over words talking to my “freebie” (granted by wife Liz in ’78 because she knew it would never happen) Linda Ronstadt, discussed having the same drum set and pedals with Ringo Starr, had Slash flip me off with a smile, shared stories with Heart’s Ann Wilson about wearing out the “Dreamboat Annie” 8-track in my beat-up ’63 Impala (primary color was bondo) and more.

I’ve saved all those interviews, so expect to see a lot of that in the book, if it ever gets done and/or published, though there’s no guarantee of anything.

Of course, the time then-Cleveland Recruiting Battalion commander Lt. Col. Randy Stephan got me into boot camp at the age of 45 after writing a column lamenting my West Point decision right after 9/11 will play a major role. That experience was made possible in large part by the Fort Sill, Okla., media liaison Nancy Elliott (who has since become one of my dearest friends, as she and her husband, retired Sgt. Jim Elliott, even visited here and stayed with me).

And because of that, I was able to undertake the greatest, most challenging, scariest and most wonderful episode of my entire career, embedded with U.S. Army troops in Iraq in 2004 in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

So, yeah, in some ways, I can be bitter about what’s happening to newspapers in general and this one in particular. But technology has moved forward and life has changed. I’m a carriage maker in a world of jet cars.

But I can’t be bitter about what I’ve been able to do. I’ve had one hell of a ride in this profession, and I’ve loved almost every minute of it. I hate that it’s over, but I wouldn’t change it, and I know who buttered my bread.

Thanks, Cleveland. I love you.

 

Janis Froelich, former BJ reporter, lives in Tierra Verde, Florida, near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and 8 miles from St. Petersburg, where I handled stories and page makeup for the St. Petersburg Times sports department in 1966-67.

Janis takes writing classes at nearby Eckerd College and volunteers for charities, her life-long habit.

After her four-decade newspaper career at the Kent Record-Courier, the BJ, St. Petersburg Times, Des Moines Register and Tampa Tribune, Janis became a free-lance writer.

She describes her former husband, Larry Froelich, at the BJ 1968-1980 whose roles included reporter, business editor and national editor, as “a wonderful father plus a good source of common sense. Since I’ve been delightfully flighty I used to rely on his advice long after we divorced."

Former BJ managing editor Bob Giles hired Janis to work at 44 E. Exchange Street.

She didn’t have a driver’s license. Giles told Janis to get one.

Janis went to Akron AAA and took driving lessons. Larry bought her a new green VW with automatic stick shift in 1969.

“I’ve been zooming around ever since,” Janis reports. “I wish I still had that VW!”

I know how Janis feels. When my son was at Cuyahoga Falls High I bought him an old used VW. He drove it home and slapped SIX coats of black rustoleum paint on it. That VW probably is rust-free on the road today!

But that was how my son, John Larry, was wired. When I bought a new Yamaha motorcycle for the family (all 5 of us had motorcycle licenses) John Larry rode it around the block on Morrison and Lincoln avenues, then took it apart and put it back together.

Old habit. When he was 5 he took an old-fashioned non-digital alarm clock apart.

No wonder when he wound up at an Akron airline brakes factory, after a tool and die apprenticeship. Today he’s worldwide projects director for Meggitt Aircraft Braking Systems, coordinating the company’s factories in England, Mexico, Kentucky and other places so that he can run operations on a computer in his office or home.

Back to Janis. When I first walked into the BJ in 1969, after Ben Maidenburg hired me as his latest reclamation project (I had been fired at the Dayton Daily News for union activities in a union-hating Cox newspaper and blackballed by Editor Jim Fain by every newspaper that checked my resume and application; smart, huh?), I looked around and two women immediately struck me as being the most attractive: the late Joan Rice and Janis Froelich. Chauvanism became, rightfully so, unwelcome in America later.

Coincidentally, Joan and Janis, who grew up in an 1853 farmhouse right off Hudson's downtown Main Street, were close friends.

When Janis came to Ohio in 2010 for a book-signing in Hudson of her work about the 1975 murder of her friend, Linda McLain, she had a reunion with Joan, former BJ photographer Ott Gangl and former BJ reporter Pat Ravenscraft Snyder.

Also at the reunion was Janis’ former Kent State roommate Paula Slimak, a former PD reporter. 

Janis wrote another book, “Team Shop,” about the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.

Janis remarried, to St. Petersburg photographer Ray Bassett. Larry remarried, to Free Press reporter Suzanne Dolezal Froelich. Larry passed away in 2017 in Ohio and is buried in Dover Burial Park in Parral, Ohio even though Larry and Suzanne lived in Lexington, Kentucky. Ohio University graduate Larry was born in Dover, Ohio.

Larry retired from the Lexington News-Leader in 2005 as news editor. He came to the Lexington newspaper from the Detroit Free Press, where he went in 1980 to join former BJ managing editor Scott Bosley when he left 44 E. Exchange Street and met Suzanne.

Larry was part of the frenetic and brilliant Pat Engelhart’s squad that brought the BJ a 1971 Pulitzer for its coverage of the 1970 Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard that killed 4 students and wounded 9 other students.

Larry’s early career was at the Dover Reporter. His editor was Harry Yockey, father of Nancy Yockey Bonar, a BJ reporter in the 1960s. While visiting Harry Yockey in his Dover office, Harry told Larry that the Dover job his old job was his for the taking since Larry was ending his military career.

Larry told Harry that he wanted to work for the BJ. So Yockey called BJ publisher Ben Maidenberg while Larry sat in Harry’s office and Ben hired Larry sight unseen.

Larry Norman Froelich was the father of Bowling Green graduate Mark Froelich, Britta Froelich Spanke and Eric Froelich, and five grandchildren. Janis is the mother of Mark and Britta. Suzanne is Eric’s mother.

Larry’s brother, Steven, who taught journalism and English for 35 years at Findlay High School, passed away in 2012 in Findlay, Ohio.

Larry’s father, Francis Froelich, was the right-hand man to Buehler Stores founder Edward Buehler and worked in Buehler stores in Wooster and Orrville. Larry was buried near his parents.

Lexington to Akron also is a familiar journey for Stuart Warner, at Ol’ Blue Walls 1979-1999 till he went to that newspaper up north, the PD, until his 2008 buyout.

Stuart and another former BJ editor, Debbie Van Tassel Warner, moved to Arizona in 2013, where they still live.

If you want to Catch Up With Janis Froelich yourself her email address is janisfroelich@yahoo.com

Dawidziak among latest 18 PD newsroom layoffs

TV Critic Mark Dawidziak, a former BJ TV and movie critic, was among the 18 Plain Dealer newsroom staffers laid off Friday. They had a combined 500 years of experience, an average of about 28 years. There was a severance package.

The carnage isn’t over either. PD management will be accepting volunteers to leave until 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 8.

Mark Dawidziak

There are only 14 Guild members left at the PD, which had 340 when the 21^st century began. There are no black females remaining on the staff, which becomes 81% white in a city that is 47% black.

The PD Guild statement praised Mark’s  “way with words for conveying the power of television to entertain, educate and bring us together. For more than two decades, he recognized this as the pre-eminent art form of our time, informing readers of important shows and technological trends.”

Mark’s newspaper career has lasted 43 years which, coincidentally, is how many years I also worked on newspapers, including 26 with the BJ.

Mark was the best TV and movie critic I had during my 16 years as the BJ's TV Editor. And I had 3 good ones: David Bianculli, who left for the New York Post and today is a college professor in New York, and Rich Heldenfels, also retired but still a free-lance TV Q&A columnist for the BJ.

Mark is 63, still short of normal retirement age. But the PD did provide severance pay and Mark has another book in the works.

And he and wife Sara Showman have their Largely Literary Theater productions of Twain, Poe, Civil War to keep them busy once the pandemic allows people in Ohio to gather for shows again.

Mark told me:

“I got to work with wonderful people and experience journalism when it was a sensational career. No regrets.

 

“And you were a big part of that, my friend. There were many incredible moments, and those are to be cherished more than anything else.

 

“Watching what's happening to journalism is like watching a loved one slowly sicken and die. I've had enough of that. I'll walk away without a backward glance.

 

“No one gets to feel sorry for me.”

 

Mark always was a class act.

Also, the PD Guild statement added, “Since 2013, Advance (which owns the PD) has methodically reduced the number of journalists in the Guild-represented Plain Dealer newsroom, while boosting the presence of its non-union newsroom at cleveland.com.”

The slash-and-burn of union members included 50 in 2013, when former BJ classical music critic Don Rosenberg got the axe (management sided with Cleveland Orchestra donors unhappy because Don’s reviews didn’t kissup to their satisfaction). That left 110 Guild employees.

The PD had previously cut 50 in 2008, including the late BJ reporter Terry Oblander, and 58 of the remaining 168 newsroom jobs in 2012.


Others who agreed to let their Friday layoffs be known:

Brian Albrecht, who chronicled the stories of World War II veterans.

Sports photographer Marvin Fong.

Jordyn Grzelewski, named one of Ohio’s best business writers by the Associated Press Media Editors.

Photographer Lynn Ischay.

Pop culture and fitness columnist Zachary Lewis, leaving no one to cover the internationally acclaimed Cleveland Orchestra.

Theater critic Andrea Simakis.

Feature writer Michael McIntyre, once a paperboy for his dad, who was in PD circulation.

Financial columnist Teresa Dixon Murray.

Business reporter OIivera Perkins.

My Cleveland columnist Grant Segall, whose topics including the park system, transportation and profiles of Clevelanders who didn’t always have impressive titles (sounds a bit like Fran Murphey).


Sports reporter/videographer Branson Wright.

Fashion, home & garden and features writer Roxanne Washington.

Music critic Chuck Yarborough, who went to Iraq for a series on the life of U.S. troops.

Health reporter Brie Zeltner.

Editor Melodie Smith.

Graphics and designer Joel Downey.