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Sam Allard / Scene
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The cleveland.com daily news podcast This Week in the CLE has rebranded as "Today in Ohio" to more accurately reflect its publication schedule and content. The podcast, which launched in 2019 as a weekly news roundup and functioned as a competitor to WCPN's Reporters Roundtable, converted to a weekday format during the pandemic.
Now hosted by editor Chris Quinn, cleveland.com content director Laura Johnston, Metro Columnist-turned-editor Leila Atassi and editorial board member Lisa Garven, the show dissects a range of stories published in the PD and on cleveland.com the previous day.
For obvious reasons, the hosts have been mulling over a name change for some time. Quinn, who has cited the podcast's steadily growing audience, wants to continue enlarging its scope and potential listener base. He has pushed for an Ohio-centric name in multiple episodes. And he loves nothing more than bashing statehouse legislators, particularly those tainted by HB6 affiliations. (Aside from Covid-19, the podcast has discussed no other story as extensively and vigorously as the HB6 scandal.)
"This thing has been successful beyond our wildest imagination," Quinn is quoted as saying in
cleveland.com's own coverage of the podcast rebrand. "We keep hearing from people that they use this as their exclusive source of news. They feel like when they listen to this each day, they are caught up on the major stories. And they very much like the way we do it — that we are talking about the stories behind the stories, and we’re throwing the flag when public officials say things that are nonsense."
The podcast has indeed been a lively addition to cleveland.com's news offerings, and the conversational format is both an accessible and enjoyable way to catch up on the day's biggest stories. But just like the Reporters Roundtable, the podcast's most important topics tend to be Northeast Ohio-based. That's for an obvious reason: While a number of outlets cover the Ohio statehouse, the PD/cleveland.com has unique insight and expertise on local news.
Statewide audience growth notwithstanding, the Cleveland metro daily should devote its flagship audio product first and foremost to Cleveland news.
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