According to sources inside the Plain Dealer, three top union reporters were pulled from their beats covering Cuyahoga County courts and local justice Wednesday. The plan is to replace them with non-union J-school grads looking for cheap jobs and covering those beats for the Northeast Ohio Media Group in its quest to gather all the listicle-worthy news you can handle.
The three reporters who have yet to be reassigned are Rachel Dissell, John Caniglia, and Jim McCarty. It seems they’re free now to do general assignment and feature work (but, ya know, only if it doesn’t involve courts or crime) until the guild contract runs out in 2019. (The union did agree to five layoffs in 2015 in the latest contract with Advance.)
These three reporters have written some of the best in-depth investigations in the paper’s recent history. Dissell broke the Steubenville High School for the mainstream media and revealed the disgraceful backlog of untested rape kits in Cuyahoga County (which led to nearly 170 indictments). Her reporting led to the arrest of Elias Acevedo for the murder of Christina Adkins and helped bring closure to the Gloria Pointer cold case. Caniglia’s reporting helped destroy corruption in the Lorain Police Department. McCarty’s stories of Jimmy Dimora’s fall from grace were some of the most-read articles in PD history. Internally, they’d all been praised for their outstanding journalism. Externally, they’d received countless state and national awards. Around the city, they’re among the most respected reporters working today.
Why would a VP give the boot to three top reporters?
The reason bandied about the Plain Dealer newsroom in the wake of the announcements is that the stories written by Dissell, Caniglia, and McCarty were generating some of the highest traffic online. Since these three reporters still work for the union-employed Plain Dealer, NEOMG and NEOMG boss Chris Quinn could not take credit for the Internet traffic. By replacing his award-winning journos, Quinn can now claim the clicks for future court stories.
Quinn did not return calls for comment.
The same thing happened not too long ago with the Cavs beat. When Mary Schmitt Boyer announced she’d be leaving the PD and the Cavs beat, the Northeast Ohio Media Group land-grabbed the Cavs, leaving the secondary Cavs writer still at the PD free to do general assignment and feature sports work (as long as it doesn’t involve the Cavs, Indians, Browns or Buckeyes.) NEOMG announced earlier this week that it had tabbed Joe Vardon, most recently a state politics reporter at the Columbus Dispatch, as its LeBron beat writer and Chris Haynes, who most recently covered the Portland Trailblazers, as its new Cavs beat writer. That’s a whole lot of new traffic in sports-hungry Cleveland (with the biggest name in sports on the team) for NEOMG to collect.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2014.
So who is paying the Northeast Ohio Media Group to pull its best investigative reporters? Sounds pretty damn shady if you ask me.
WTF? I thought the crime beat was always considered the Varsity Team of ANY major city newspaper? Now we are going to get criminal court reporting from college kids whose knowledge of the law is derived entirely from a few episodes of Law & Order?
HITH can this POSSIBLY make sense? What next — reassigning the editorial writers to run for coffee?
After 40 + years of taking the PD, I finally gave up and cancelled my subscription. The owners are doing their best to flush a once respected newspaper right down the toilet. Their handling of Jodie Valade was indicative of how they are screwing over their employees. I’m still getting a daily paper but now it’s the Beacon Journal.
Sad. Just sad. Hopefully they can find work somewhere else, maybe at a place that will appreciate excellent journalists?
To be fair, Mary Schmitt Boyer was, let’s just say, not very good. A respected NBA beat reporter like Chris Haynes is most welcome.
NEOMG has killed the Sun papers already, running half the stories in the PD as well, and removing a ton of truly local news. I won’t be renewing that subscription. This is one more straw on this camel. I will really miss Dissell’s outstanding reporting in particular. The corporatization of America continues.
As a 20+ year real estate agent from small brokerages I have to smile at this story. The Plain Dealer, for decades, would not write anything about how the large real estate brokerages would give only half the normal commission to the smaller brokerages who wrote offers on their listings. (called an adverse split) Simply because the smaller companies did not have the clout to fight the larger ones in court and the largest real estate company in Ohio was running 2-3 page ads on the PD every Sunday. This may seem irrelevant but its very important. Because it meant that a good story is squashed if the story is about a large advertising client of the paper. Now the unthinkable has happened, both the paper and the large real estate company are gone. Some sort of poetic justice there. When I saw this and the 60 minutes episode about George Bush (Just before the elections with Gore) not reporting to duty and it all turned out to be a lie made up and printed and supported by 60 minutes, I realized its all a lie. To be fair they are entertainers and they want to sell papers. It was my fault for thinking they reported the actual news.
Well, much as I would personally like to find whoever decided the area needed 1,001 articles in the past 8 months on “Why Richmond Heights Should Not Have Any Black Woman As Mayor”, I am not going to blame NEOMG for trying just about ANYTHING to stay solvent.
BUT LIES? Misinformation? Grievous Errors? I read the report on the Harry Jacob trial and thought I would have to take a valium. (Harry Jacob is the Bedford judge would got caught spending court time on prostitutes, etc.) The reporter interviewed the defense attorney — like he is free to say what he thinks? — and then called predation on a sex worker “a lifestyle issue”.
Last night, I had some dimwit editor insisting I am too stupid to understand why the demolition of the abandoned property here MUST be paid for with a $50 Million bond issue, because collecting back taxes from a bank is “too hard”.
That’s just one step above conspiracy to defraud, IMO.
To the remaining decent reporters at the PD: you need to consider whether your fine reputations can withstand this kind of yellow journalism. Why don’t you start an e-paper? I would certainly pay to read one.
Has anyone read the stuff this Haynes guy is writing on the Cavs? High school level writing at best. An absolute embarrassment. Must have gotten him dirt cheap.