Our apologies to Cleveland Plain Dealer media columnist Julie Washington for the first item below.
And for that matter, to ourselves, for looking so out of touch in front of all of you.
Ms. Washington’s Sunday column apparently covered Mr. Duncan’s departure from WERE/1490.
We say “apparently”, because the online version at Cleveland.com has a glitch that doesn’t allow one to go past the story on NBC’s Brian Williams doing his broadcast from Cleveland this week. Scroll to the bottom, and tell us if we’re missing the “Page 2” link. Or, maybe she has a column under another heading that has the Ronnie Duncan story…we can’t find it.
Unless we manage to get our mitts on Sunday’s Dead Trees edition of PD (we’re not a subscriber), we won’t be able to read the story.
This is an ongoing problem with us and the PD content found on Cleveland.com.
Ms. Washington has a columnist “page” (currently labeled “Location: Cleveland” for her articles related to filmmaking efforts in Cleveland).
The media-related columns OCCASIONALLY end up there, but Sunday’s effort has not…though the “180 day archive” lists her November 4th piece talking to local radio consultant and former WMMS/100.7 programmer John Gorman about his “Buzzard” book. And not much else until an October column.
Is this any way to run a newspaper’s website?
Oh, and aside to Roger Brown, if that’s really you in the comments in our last item – welcome. “Word is” that people did mostly enjoy your column when it was in the PD. You were certainly well-read.
But as far as our own “breathless” accounting of breaking news and scoops…does the phrase “tongue in cheek” mean anything to you?
You’re a print journalist. You were employed by a major metropolitan newspaper, and as far as we know, still are employed by a pair of suburban papers.
You get paid to do your job. The Plain Dealer used to write paychecks to you, and we assume you’re not doing stuff for the Lake County News-Herald and the Lorain Morning Journal for free.
We’re basically a “one-man band” (“Your Primary Editorial Voice(tm)”) and do this on our own time, for free, and at our own leisure. Maybe we ought to start having fun with our little “THIS JUST IN” and “BREAKING NEWS” headers, to make our sense of humor clearer.
We’re often *surprised* when we “break” local media stories here.
They mostly just fall into our lap from regular readers, or from readers we didn’t know we had with extensive connections (and even titles like “Vice President” or “General Manager”). One of the biggest surprises we ever got was when a well-known local cluster programmer somewhere outside our regular coverage area told us he enjoyed our work, unsolicited.
Roger…admit it, you have a “schtick”, as do we. Your shout outs to Ronnie Duncan, Chris Rose, and the like are legendary.
(We have “friends of OMW”, too, ya know. There may be drinking games based on our frequent mentions of “long-time friend and colleague Scott Fybush”.)
Your apparent interest in real estate values of local sports-related personalities is also legendary, as is your use of the phrase “Word is”. Some find it humorous.
You know? Some do that with us, too.
We have our own lingo and expressions, and some of it causes people to roll their eyes. We have our own regular rotation of topics – you should see the E-Mail when we post articles about Youngstown/Warren-market based small radio group operator Beacon Broadcasting (WANR/WRTK/WLOA/WGRP/WEXC).
It comes with the territory.
Oh, and these comments, moved from the previous item’s comment section and edited slightly for context, are from us:
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1) We rarely post in the comments. We’d actually like them to go away.
2) We don’t see (the comments) section as “having the last word”. We generally only close off the comments these days if there are out-of-hand comments against subjects we address. We’ve even had to do it once or twice with very unkind/serious comments people made against you!
3) You confuse the people in (the comments section) with this blog’s author. All of our comments have the convenient “Ohio Media Watch” Blogger login link above them, like this one.
4) If you are indeed still writing a media-related column for a Northeast Ohio newspaper(s), your writing is fair for us to read, digest and comment upon. If you’re “out of the media business”, tell us, and the name Roger Brown will no longer come off of our keyboard.
5) And most important – (this update) shows that we don’t run from our goofs. We point them out, we highlight them, we shine a spotlight on them, we apologize.
(Though this one is not ENTIRELY our fault, since we couldn’t actually READ the column without the “on paper” version – and the online version not being available. If we’re missing that, we’ll apologize again.)
If you are still writing media columns, feel free to tell us an easy, “don’t have to use the search option” method to find your columns on the websites of either suburban paper, and we’ll be happy to direct people there again.
Basically, though? Lighten up, my friend…
–Your Primary Editorial Voice(tm)
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