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| You’ve been asking about them
Letter from the Editor Stimulus watch. Community columnists. A lynching. Disparate topics, yes, but topics you’ve been asking me about in emails in recent weeks, so this week’s column is a catch all.
What has happened to Stimulus Watch?
Last year we announced we would dedicate a reporter full-time to following the hundreds of millions of dollars that the federal government was sending to Ohio and communities in Northeast Ohio, as part of the American Rescue Plan. We assigned Robin Goist to the role, and she explored a variety of topics as elected leaders mused on how to use the cash.
Robin decided to make a career change as the year, to become more of an activist in causes that are important to her than a reporter chronicling what is happening. She did great work for us, and we wish her well in her new career.
We’ve been searching for her replacement for a couple of months. It’s a unique job, requiring a familiarity with how government works, an affinity for spreadsheets and a healthy dose of skepticism. It’s also a great job, one that, when I was a reporter, I would have moved heaven and earth to land. I feel sure we will find a good candidate for it in the near future, and you’ll start seeing the stories again.
I’m heartened by the number of people who noticed the Stimulus Watch stories went missing. We received strong feedback for Stimulus Watch. Rest assured it will return.
What’s going on with the community columnists?
I announced last year that we wished to add more voices and perspectives to our platforms by building a roster of freelance columnists. We had a bunch of people raise their hands, and I turned to Laura Johnston, our content director, and Leila Atassi, our public interest editor, to go through them all, interview finalists and recommend candidates.
I deliberately have not written a piece to introduce the columnists because I did not want to pigeonhole them with whatever I might write. These are multi-faceted people with a lifetime of experiences, and we decided they should all introduce themselves. They’ve now done that, and I’m providing links here to their introductory columns, in case you missed them.
And because our newsletter platform appears have some issues with hyperlinks, as anyone who read this column a couple of weeks ago might have noticed, I’ve created tinyurl links that, if they fail to work when you click on them, you can copy and paste into your browser to get to the columns.
Here they are:
Justice B. Hill https://tinyurl.com/meetjusticebhill
Chardonnay Graham https://tinyurl.com/meetchardonnaygraham
Maple Buescher https://tinyurl.com/meetmaplebuescher
Nancy Kelsey https://tinyurl.com/meetnancykelsey
Leslie Kouba https://tinyurl.com/meetlesliekouba
Why did our newsroom call a century-old shooting a lynching and put a story about it on the front page of The Plain Dealer last Sunday?
This one threw me, I must say. We published a story last week about a mob that formed on Cleveland’s West Side a century ago to chase down three men who had stolen some cherries from an orchard. The mob cornered one of the men and, among calls to string him up, ended up fatally shooting him.
Travel editor and reporter Susan Glaser learned of this story, which no one in Northeast Ohio seemed to know about, and put together the details. It’s a fascinating piece about the only known lynching in Cuyahoga County.
I received a bunch of emails from people complaining that we called the death a lynching – he was shot, not hanged -- and put it on the front page. People accused us of being divisive.
First, we did not call it a lynching. Researchers who are experts on the topic of lynchings call it a lynching, and Susan’s story contains a clear explanation as to why. Second, we publish all kinds of interesting stories on our front pages. This was one of the best reads of the week and clearly merited placement there. (The other stories on the front page were an analysis of the end of Bill Mason’s era as a political kingmaker and a guide to the Cavaliers for people who suddenly want to follow the team in its unexpected rise to the top this season.)
I don’t receive a lot of emails questioning the placement of stories on the front page of The Plain Dealer, so I was surprised by people taking offense to this one. Several were pretty racist, even using the n-word, but the theme of most was division. They saw our motive as seeking to divide people, or they believe the consequence of publishing the story would be further division.
I just don’t see that. When interesting, unknown pieces of our history emerge, we consider that to be news. That was the case here.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Quinn Editor and Vice President of Content
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