The following are remarks made at the Press Club Hall of Fame dinner by Roldo Bartimole, inductee.

I feel a little like Groucho Marx. He’s the one who said, “I do not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as a member.” I say that because some people might think it strange for an outsider to be here.

However, I think I’ve been given this opportunity because some believe I’ve set an example that others may copy – to stray from the conventional path. Phil Porter wrote me when I left the Plain Dealer that I had a bright future there. Truth be told, I would have had a frustrating life there, straightjacketed into a conventional view of the world.

Before I get too serious, I am doubly grateful to be here tonight because I heard that if I hadn’t accepted this award, it would have been given to Alex Machaskee. It would have been his 500th community award this year, breaking the previous record held by Tom Vail.

I want to take time to acknowledge my wife, Ann Abid, my children Lucy and my son Todd here with my 10-year old grandson, Ian.

I also want to say something about Bill Gunlocke who tried to give the city a different and unique voice with The Edition. He gave me - probably to his acute financial detriment - a wider audience than I had with Point of View.

I found it amusing that the Plain Dealer’s report of the Press Club awards noted I worked part-time - 50 years ago - for the Boston Globe sports department. But neglected to mention at all Point of View and its 32-year duration here in Cleveland.

The paper did spell my name correctly. Thank you, Doug (Clifton, Plain Dealer editor who emceed the proceedings).

My journey as an outsider really started in my hometown of Bridgeport, CT. As a young reporter, I took the 1960 census and identified the city’s worse census tracts. I traveled them, walking up tenement stairs to talk to the people who lived there and endured the conditions. What I found and what I revealed was tragic. In more places I visited than I want to remember - people, including children, - died in predictable fires. I learned from my reporting that not only did city government not care, not only did slum landlords not care, not only did most of the community not care, but the newspaper cared so little they ordered me to stop telling the story.

My short tenures at The Plain Dealer taught me other lessons. I saw how power – both individual and institutional – influenced public decisions. This was particularly true in the tumultuous 1960s. There were many examples in Point of View of how that worked. Even the mild Plain Dealer column by Tom Andrzejwski hassling Dick Jacobs and the opening of the Galleria appeared in only Point of View after being censored by The Plain Dealer. Reporters pick up from editors, who pick up from their bosses, what’s acceptable and what’s not. They more often than not stay within those bounds. Sacred cows, particularly corporate, are rarely the target of the conventional media. So that was another lesson I learned that put me on a different course.

In 1968, I started Point of View because I felt there was a need for a voice that didn’t share the worldview reflected by conventional news outlets and their corporate dominated thinking.

Though from time to time a story will get into the paper that’s critical of power, I still feel that need I saw isn’t being filled by The Plain Dealer. I pick on it because it’s the biggest and it’s the media leader. Television news, pardon me Ted (Henry, also an inductee), is essentially useless and heading south. Commercial radio used to have a voice in this town but it’s now mostly irrelevant.

I was amused that a PD op/ed recently noted, “The next governor of Ohio must be bold and bright.” I guess the paper didn’t check its endorsements for governor, mayor or county commissioner for the last decade or two. Didn’t they recommend almost all these people? Didn’t they bang the drum for every project that has come along in Cleveland with little or no discrimination about real public value? Maybe what we need are “bolder and brighter” - and tougher - editors. Maybe the PD endorsement fight will help.

Information is the glue of a community. It keeps it together.

I believe more effort is devoted by The Plain Dealer to its food pages, its sports pages and its social pages than its coverage of who is doing what to whom in our real world. It too often puts readers - and its reporters - to sleep. The Plain Dealer fails to put the community into context so people can make decisions. We’re getting much too much of this civic journalism crap. By the way, what is this ideastream? Is it: “Why can’t we all get along” journalism? It could be sponsored by Wal-Mart. Maybe it is.

This community needs dissent. It must be nurtured. I think it’s the responsibility of the news media to foster debate. But there needs to be critical reporting on big institutions for that to happen. They’re all accepted as “good.” Why? Who gives them their reputations? They don’t get the spotlight thrown on them. The brand of debate seems to be to bring these leaders together to tell us what we - not they – do wrong.

I want to know a lot more about the people and institutions making decisions in this community. I don’t get it in my morning newspaper.

I got more information that was useful in a week of Milt Widder’s gossip columns in the old Press than I do in a month of the entire Plain Dealer now. Widder made connections in short items about who was associating with whom and what business deals were going on. In other words, he told us about our community, about its movers and what they were doing. I used to collect and save them.

Just recently, someone told me of a cozy downtown threesome lunch meeting of Albert Ratner, Sam Miller and Dick Jacobs. That news would have found its way into Widder’s column because people who knew the community would see them and know what telephone number to call. Now what DO you think those three guys were cutting up? A new convention center - this time to benefit BOTH of them so things could run a bit smoother than the last time. Get ready for the bill for that lunch.

What we are still missing in our daily news media is the information that exposes those vested interests. Essentially, who pays and who benefits. I hope in my years that I succeeded in some respect in giving that perspective and hopefully that’s why I’m here tonight. And I thank you for this award and the opportunity. Thank you all. from Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo@Adelphia.net

 (:divend:)