By Roldo Bartimole

By the time you read this, the Plain Dealer (maybe I need to go back to calling it the Pee Dee) might have ramped up its coverage of the 2005 mayoral election campaign.

If it has, it’s too late, Doug and Tom. Badly and sadly belated. This community appears to be near comatose and in a depressing malaise. That condition may help determine who the next mayor will be. Moreover, that might be the wrong choice. (Doug is Doug Clifton, editor, and Tom is Tom O’Hara, managing editor.)

What have they been thinking about during this period? One knows that the news has been heavy but this is their city despite the removal of the word “Cleveland” in their name.

This has been the time for a critically needed debate about where this community is going and how it might get there. Presumably, the newspaper and its leadership – carping about the Quiet Crisis for years – didn’t believe so, failed to take notice, or doesn’t believe its citizens can respond – so why bother.

Of course, there are 21 Council races also, not all with opposition but one would think there are some important races that have been essentially ignored.

It’s good to remind readers that neither Clifton nor O’Hara are Clevelanders, nor have they seemed to catch on to Cleveland politics.

Meanwhile Publisher Alex “The Snake” Machaskee will be delivering a speech today at the Cleveland Advertising Association entitled, “Believe in Cleveland!” Ads say he has “a few things to say about the future of our town.” It would be nice if Alex bestirred his editors to tell us about “our town,” and not only this election.

[S]everal bloggers – Bill Callahan, George Nemeth, Tim Russo and sometimes others - have tried to fill the void by recording hour-long conversations with those candidates who made themselves available. You can pick them up at Nemeth’s blog, “Brewed Fresh Daily.”

Otherwise, the community has been left adrift. Maybe more important, the candidates have been left adrift. One wonders if there will be voters who know there is an election less than two weeks away.

The candidates seem to sense this, too. There have been – unless I’m missing badly – little attack and counterattack. Such interchanges, spiced by news coverage, would provide some issue debates. Issue debates in the news might inform the public of the ideas of each candidate. Issue debates in the news could advance one candidate over another because of her or his ideas. Alternatively, the opposite for some.

Instead, the lack of coverage and interest has created a vacuum in a city that needs prodding out of its deepening depression.

While the community needs a shock, it’s being treated with valium by the Pee Dee.

Mark Naymik, its political writer, uses items in his column that merit fuller coverage and discussion as articles. Space apparently does not allow him to do articles. Naymik is allowed a column that does not give him the latitude that he needs to be a chief political writer for the newspaper. There’s a great difference in the power of an item column vs. a commenting column. A commenting column allows the writer to express his views backed by his knowledge and instincts. It also gives him standing with politicians who now may ignore him.

The Pee Dee hasn’t had that kind of a column since Steve Luttner attempted to write a column with some punch. He was dumped in 1994 for his effort. It got him dumped into the suburbs and out of his job when he got a bit tough on former Mayor Michael White, who later became the reviled target of the same newspaper, and rightly so but so many years too late (again).

The chore of providing the community with some sense of what is happening politically is left to Brent Larkin, editorial page editor. Larkin, a former Press city hall reporter, has the knowledge and historical memory to comment on political events.

However, Larkin hasn’t been out on the street for years and years. Indeed, a column he wrote regarding this election called upon the details of the 1977 election when Dennis Kucinich and Edward Feighan came in one and two in the primary that year, and left the then Mayor Ralph Perk out of the general election. This could possibly happen to the present Mayor Jane Campbell, thus Larkin’s column.

Larkin’s stranglehold on political commentary has given him unusual power, particularly because Clifton seems to rely upon Larkin’s knowledge and historic memory. [Everyone seems to forget] Larkin’s major indiscretion when he was caught taking a trip on developer and then Indians’ owner Dick Jacobs’ private jet to the World Series in 1999. Someone reported this trip anonymously to Clifton but it has not diminished Larkin. That was the plane trip where Jacobs portrayed a Ku Klux Klansman to the amusement of his fellow travelers, including George Forbes, head of the NAACP.

Another aspect of this lack of commentary on the election has been Clifton’s movement of two book pages to the Sunday Forum pages. That has chopped a full page from editorial comment or 52 pages a year. That is quite a cut, particularly with the PD’s penchant for large photos. (The PD gave up the back page of the Forum, which it had been using for a company ad.)

It’s so late in the campaign now, less than two weeks as you read this, that the damage is done.

Wonder if editors Clifton and O’Hara will take any blame for this oversight? Nah.

Short

An alert to city, county and any other officials listening: The New York Times reported that Forest City Ratner has advanced in its desire to purchase land in Brooklyn, N. Y., for an arena and other development. Bruce Ratner heads the operation there and just increased his bid for public land from $50 million to $100 million. Another company had offered $150 million.

The Times reports, “The state and the city have agreed to provide $100 million each in direct subsidies. The project will also receive tax breaks, low-interest financing and other benefits that would bring the total public investment to an estimated $1 billion.”

A couple of months ago at a Convention Facilities meeting Albert Ratner came up to me and said that I’d have a ball covering his company around the country because Forest City was receiving so much in government subsidy. I guess he was not kidding.

Do you think $1 billion in gifts are enough incentive to draw Forest City Enterprises headquarters from Cleveland to New York City where Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports the Ratner project?

Should the Convention Facilities Commission be reconsidering the Forest City reversed decision to make itself available for the new convention center behind Tower City when this possible move might be closer than we think?
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole RoldoAtAdelphia.Net

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