According to the Plain Dealer's director of planning and project management Chris Chimes, the ShopCLE circular will halt publication after its Jan. 27, 2016 issue.
"Until then," Chimes wrote in an email to the local Sierra Club (and forwarded to Scene), "delivery of the local news, information and shopping product will continue each Wednesday, via the USPS or carrier delivery to driveways."
Chimes did not respond Wednesday night and Thursday morning to requests for comment regarding the decision to cease publication, but recent efforts by suburban residents to negotiate mail delivery, and a resolution passed Monday by Cleveland City Council "urging" the Plain Dealer / cleveland.com to "immediately stop littering public property" can't have helped.
Plain Dealer depot manager Cathy McBride was not at her desk when we called for comment.
Bob Rosenbaum, who started the "ShopCLE: Stop Littering Out Streets" Facebook group, (and who co-chairs the Heights Observer advisory committee) posted to the group's page that he didn't think residents "making a stink" was the sole reason ShopCLE opted to call it quits. He speculated that advertiser support might be insufficient to cover mail delivery, or at least insufficient to make mail delivery make financial sense.
"The goal was to end their dumping of papers throughout the community, and I’m glad that’s going to happen." Rosenbaum wrote in an email to Scene. "I don’t take pleasure in the paper being discontinued. But I’d also say that if the economic feasibility of a media product depends on tossing it from the windows of a moving car, it probably shouldn’t be published at all."
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