Cleveland Scene magazine ran a fine, overlooked story on the ticking clock at the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, as journalists and readers alike await Advance Publications’s next move in its remorseless campaign to make its regional newsrooms fit a free-news model.

Vince Grzegorek talked to current and former staffers, executives and analysts, and delivers a chilling and very likely correct analysis: What happened in New Orleans is about to happen in Cleveland.

Can The Plain Dealer Be Saved? In short, no. Cleveland will soon be left without a daily newspaper

The issue, as the piece makes clear, isn’t so much cutting back print delivery, but the massive staff cuts that accompany Advance’s strategy of relying solely on digital ads to supplement a weakened print operation. This is a model—”the future of news,” circa 2009—that the rest of the industry has already begun to put in its rear-view mirror in favor of taking the now demonstrated ability of digital subscriptions to help offset print losses. But Advance continues on an increasingly lonely—entirely voluntary—path that doesn’t just risk, but requires dramatic, immediate, value-destroying newsroom cuts. This is already a done deal in New Orleans and the South, as well as Michigan.

Here’s the nut section, with Grzegorek’s conclusion in the last paragraph:

Advance has done so with zero regard for nostalgia or tradition, and little public comment aside from vague declarations of a continued commitment to quality journalism through a refocused “digital-first” format.

In an open letter to readers on page one of the Sunday, Nov. 18 Plain Dealer, Publisher Terry Egger and Editor Debra Simmons admitted that changes were coming and acknowledged Advance’s resumé of downsizing. It was an unusual and unprecedented public statement from the top two at the paper, prompted in part by the Save the Plain Dealer campaign, which was trying to proactively spread word of the looming danger.

“While Advance has been developing and refining this effort for several years, it is the role of our leadership team in Cleveland to design the best model to safeguard the future of our enterprise and to preserve the quality of our journalism at The Plain Dealer,” Egger and Simmons wrote. “We do not have a specific plan, timeline or structure for Cleveland. But we will — very soon.”

Which is bullshit. The Newhouse family, which runs Advance Publications, knows very well what the plan and timeline is for The Plain Dealer. It’s the same plan rolled out in all the cities mentioned above. And when it’s done here, Cleveland will be the largest city in America without a daily newspaper.

The report casts a deeply skeptical eye on Cleveland management’s claims that decisions will be made locally, and not by Advance’s senior management in New Jersey. And staffers aren’t buying it either:

“They’re not saying, ‘What should our model be?’” says reporter Rachel Dissell, also a Save the Plain Dealer committee member. “They’re just hashing out the details. I think all the decisions are being made [at Advance headquarters] in New Jersey.”
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Dean Starkman writes and edits The Audit. He is CJR's Kingsford Capital Fellow.