My first direct experience with Jane Kahoun came on an Election Night a lot of years ago, when I was a reporter. Jane was an editor who coordinated election coverage, with a seemingly insurmountable goal of putting complete results in front of readers picking up their Wednesday morning papers.

I’d worked Election Nights at other papers, but I’d never seen anything like Jane’s operation. This was long before election results were digital, so the Board of Elections provided results in long printouts. Every so often while tallying ballots through the night, elections officials got their dot matrix printers cranking to give us results as they stood in the moment. Jane’s ultimate duty was to get the many numbers on the printouts typed into the system that fed the newspaper, to meet a succession of deadlines for various editions of the paper.

To do it, she grabbed nearly every reporter in the newsroom. A bunch of us were crammed into a room at the Board of Elections, each sitting by a landline telephone. A matching number of us sat in front of rudimentary newsroom computers, each with a short, unique list of races on the screen. One person might have Beachwood through Bedford listings, another East Cleveland through Garfield Heights.

Each time the printout came, we carefully tore it into the lists for which we were responsible. The people at the elections office then phoned the people in the newsroom to dictate the latest numbers, race by race, and the people in the newsroom furiously typed in those numbers. Within minutes, the lists were ready to go into print. Often, the Elections office would provide 100 percent results within minutes of our last deadline of the night, and Jane’s system meant we got the job done.

I was in awe the first time I saw the system at work.

And I’ve been in awe of Jane ever since.

Jane is the rarest sort of leader, one who is universally respected – beloved, really – while inspiring excellence from those in her charge. I’ve rarely seen her get angry. I’ve never seen her lose her cool. She fiercely protects those she supervises from nonsense or unfair criticism, and she champions their work as if it were her own.

Jane is my model for how to treat people I supervise. She clearly cares deeply about the people on her team, giving them kindness and respect, which is what I think inspires them to do their best work. I wish I could say I met Jane’s standard more regularly. I don’t. But it’s my aim.

She’s been Statehouse and politics editor for most of the years I’ve worked closely with her, and as I think back on the succession of teams she managed in the Statehouse, I’m struck by how strong they all were. It’s been one powerhouse group after another. I suspect one reason they’ve all been so good is Jane’s leadership.

They’ve loved working with her. During the occasional newsroom shakeups we’ve had, in which we change reporter assignments, the people who learn they’ve become part of Jane’s team act like they just won the lottery.

That’s not to say she’s some kind of pushover. She’s not. She’s all about excellence, and she makes sure the stories she edits meet her definition of it. It’s the way she does it that is magic. She’s not mean or curt. She patiently explains where the stories are deficient and coaches the reporters to raise the quality. She’d hate people to think she’s some softie, and I speak from personal experience when I say she minces no words when she has a point to make or disagrees with a decision. She’s been my most steadfast foil for years, always ready with a quip to knock me off my high horse.

On top of her management skills, she’s a terrific journalist. The best in our profession never lose their curiosity or their excitement about a good story. To this day, when Jane has such a story coming, she loves to call me to share it. She exults in a juicy piece of news. And she’s often the reason you’ll find a savagely funny headline in our popular Capitol Letter newsletter, which she edits.

It breaks my heart to say that in a month, Jane will retire, after nearly 37 years in the Cleveland newsroom. For years I’ve dreaded this moment, the inevitable dark day when I no longer get to work with her. I wrote a column earlier this year about the retirement of Mark Vosburgh, one of the pillars in my career in journalism. Jane’s the other. I’ve not worked with anyone else like her.

Since last spring, I’ve been able to chat and laugh with her daily on our This Week in the CLE podcast. Listeners will know what I mean about her being my foil.

People in the journalism business can sometimes feel imbued with a sense of self-importance, and to combat that, we often remind ourselves as we toil away that we simply are filling our roles, that none of us are irreplaceable.

But Jane is.

Irreplaceable.

If you’ve found enrichment in our Statehouse and politics coverage over the last couple of decades – whether it’s about the House Bill 6 scandal, COVID-19, John Kasich, Ted Strickland, Rob Portman, Coingate or a bazillion other topics -- do me a favor and send Jane a note to let her know. She’s at [email protected]

And if you know any good candidates for a Statehouse and politics editor, let me know.

Because, how do you replace someone who is irreplaceable?

Thanks