When I announced on March 16th at the onset of the pandemic that Scene would, for the first time since its inception in 1970, be temporarily suspending print operations, I was hoping that would be the worst it would get, but I had a strong hunch I was wrong.
It didn’t take long for the hunch to be proven right.
Two days later Scene laid off five employees — more than half of the already meager staff.
With no print advertising, or much advertising at all — since almost every business was suffering from similar catastrophic financial impacts, especially Cleveland’s venerable music venues, bars and restaurants that helped fill our pages — and no possibility of throwing the parties and events to pay for our journalism habit, the situation was beyond dire and looking darker.
While we had spent early 2020 planning blowouts and a special issue to celebrate the magazine’s 50th anniversary in July, there was at that point an open question if there’d be even an online operation surviving by that time.
So we asked you to help, to support local, skeptical, important journalism in Cleveland that you won’t find anywhere else, first with a blanket plea for donations and then, starting in early May, with the Scene Press Club to deliver some benefits to those who could contribute to our goal of raising $50,000.
We thought what Scene provides the city was worth preserving, and we bet that you thought so too.
I had a hunch Cleveland would come through, and you have, and I’m every bit as happy to have been right about that as sad as I was to be right about the imminent cleaving of Scene’s staff three months ago.
Over the 55 days prior to the launch of the Press Club, you contributed $27,456. In the month that followed, you contributed another $27,614, with hundreds of readers committing to recurring monthly donations that will lay the foundation for a sustainable way forward.
Because of those contributions, we’ve already been able to bring back dining editor Doug Trattner, who provides the most exclusive and essential coverage of the food scene in Cleveland, bring on a regular arts contributor, bring you some Manny Wallace photo galleries, enlist freelancers to tackle stories we would not otherwise have the time or resources to do, and continue to provide regular and vital news coverage of protests, their aftermath, City Hall, City Council, prospective mayoral candidates, turmoil at moCa Cleveland, and, yes, all the butthole news fit to (digitally) print.
Your contributions have also allowed us to make the decision to return Scene to the streets starting on July 1.
That happens to be the week of our 50th anniversary, so there is no more fitting time to get the presses running again (though the official package celebrating the occasion will happen sometime later this year). It will be a slimmed down version, published every other week to start, and many of your favorite parts — the concert calendar, the event listings — will not be part of the paper for now. But plenty other good stuff will be, and there will be a Scene, and it will be free, and that is something to be happy about.
Thank you, sincerely, to everyone who’s helped so far.
These waters might feel more generally steady than they did a few months ago, but they’re still unstable and prone to surprises. So if you haven’t already, please do join the Scene Press Club.
And if you’re interested in advertising in the upcoming issues, please do get in touch: 216-802-7241, scene@clevescene.com.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2020.
back to cutting down the trees to print the idiocy of Sam Allard and Vince Grzegorek. These people supported the riot that caused millions of dollars in damage to our community. They promote agitators. They write like children. Why would anyone give them money?
I knew a guy that was a janitor for a local shopping center. The first thing he did when he got to work was to empty all of the Scene boxes and those free real estate and car magazines and throw them into the dumpster. He said people would just take them, give them a quick glance and throw them into the landscape.
Randy: if I catch you making a white box disappear, you will disappear.
City Boy, you won’t do shit but wake up in the hospital.
Try me, asshole. You’ll get something you don’t want or like.
Would i kill somebody over a SCENE box? Wanna be the first to find out?
I’m fed up with what the right-wing a-holes have done to this site since the PD closed its comment boards and the way you POS clowns brought your trolling here and ruined it. You don’t deserve to remain alive. And you have the balls to claim that the blacks are ruining this city?
City boy, you shoulda been downtown on May 30, they smashed up a bunch of them white boxes youre protecting, you would have been so pissed. Check out the pic, if you find out who did it will you beat their butt or make them disappear with magic or whatever?
Midnight, Wingnut…time for all good little anti-Communist anti-jpurnalist anti-antifa patriots to get some Zs so you can be up at dawn and burning up more minutes on your phone defending America and your Orange Leader and pissing all over Sam and Vince’s site. it’s not only WHAT you do…it’s ALL you do. Eighteen…twenty hours a day, getting by on four hours of sleep and uppers. You need a goddamned life, kid. Your obsession is going to do you in even before some anti-fascist finds you and makes you smile from ear to ear.
Groveling for money under the guise of ‘The Scene Press Club’
Didn’t you two jackholes rip Cleveland dot com for doing that exact same thing a few months back?
Birdcages citywide are rejoicing!
Im a member of the Scene Press Club. I make a recurring, monthly donation. I’m telling you right now that your comments section pollutes you’re newspaper. You need to review all comments before allowing them to be posted, just like the New York Times does. If you can’t do that, you need to shut it all down, just like The Plain Dealer did.
People from all over the world read these comments, and the impression the comments create is that Cleveland is nothing but a disorganized pack of slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging incels. (Wise up, fellas. If you showered once a week, you might not all be involuntarily celibate.)
Stop wasting money on trattner. He adds nothing to the discourse.
Press releases of restaurants opening can be managed by an intern. His shilling for his favorites is obvious.
Walt, don’t worry the comment section that offends you so so much because there are things written there you don’t like to deal with mentally will be gone soon. There’s too many threats from you violent leftists on here. The current website setup will need to be reformatted and that is expensive so if you could double your donation for “vince and Sam’s site” that’d help a lot towards sending bail money to rioters.
“Im[sic] a member of the Scene Press Club.”
“…your comments section pollutes you’re[sic] newspaper”
Dear Wally,
I’m going to recommend that you take the money you are wasting on “The Scene Press Club” and take some lessons on proofreading first, That way you wont look like such a clown as you stereotype and insult everyone.
Love always,
One of the ‘disorganized pack of slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging incels’ that doesn’t shower
The printed version of The Scene and the PD are both on ‘life support’ for various reasons. Extreme left slant to everything they print, snail paced delivery and the risk of transmitting disease to name a few. And they are more responsible for litter than the blue plastic bags.
Walter, it’s not just SCENE comments. It’s Triv on AM radio, too.
They should pass out vomit bags at the Turnpike service plazas.