More on the case of that NEOMG disappearing video

The Plain Dealer finally took an official but less than persuasive  step toward  explaining why  it pulled a video of the gubernatorial candidates' group meeting with the editorial board of the Plain Dealer and the Northeast Ohio Media Group.(NEOMG)

In a long and painful la nostra culpa today, Ted Diadiun, NEOMG's reader representative,   courageously led the reader along a  bumpy path to the cut-and run    decision that lay squarely in the hands of Chris Quinn, NEOMG's vice president of content.  But soon after the video's brief appearance on  cleveland.com, Quinn turned to damage control as  the shameful inexplicable  maneuver went virile on social media as well as that of Columbia Journalism Review.

That produced some panic, as though  someone had been caught with his hand in the news jar.  Panic?  Quinn even harshly threatened to sue Plunderbund   from  posting some clips  from the original video.  (A Cleveland TV station even flashed the quips, which is where I saw our casually attired govcrnor  turning his head away from Ed FitzGerald and Green candidate Anita Rios with a satanic laugh.

We later learned that he never bothered to answer the board's questions nor fully acknowledge the other two candidates.  That, my friends, was the full, nasty Kasich that we have come to know as a guy entirely without  social skills.  Even a football coach whose team has been thrashed by the other guys will push onto the field to meet the victorious coach.

According to Diadiun,  Quinn, now the veep of discontent,  had realized that he hadn't  informed  the candidates that the session would be released for public consumption.

"When the governor's staff saw the video on cleveland.com., they were chagrined, and contacted NEOMG,"  Diadiun wrote.  Quinn's explanation:  He had "gotten busy as the candidates and board members arrived in staggered groups, and he never followed through."

Diadiun said Quinn's reasons for pulling the video were a matter of fairness and defensible.  But he did write that Quinn's delay in explaining it were "indefensible."

The reaction to the messy wake was guaranteed.   Diadiun  noted that the mystery  led people - including me - to believe ''something more sinister was  afoot than the obvious,   people began advancing crazy ideas, such as that  Kasich had ordered the video to be deleted, or that it was taken down because it made the endorsed candidate look bad."

Quinn said  nobody had asked him to remove the video.  Oh?

I am among those who believe  that Kasich played a role  in the disappearing act. As one who organized and moderated Akron Press Club debates for several years, I can tell you that the  panelists always wanted to know all of the rules, which were either sent to them or explained at the site.   That's how you do these things.  There were never to be any surprises.

I simply can't - and won't - believe that Kasich, who spent  much of his  campaign dodging reporters and refusing debates, didn't know all of the rules well ahead of arriving at the PD and demanded that the PD cool it, or words to that effect.   The rest of the details have the appearance of Reddi Wip.  .

The Plain Dealer: So where was the bonus?

I know that all of you Plain Dealer  non-subscribers must be anxiously wondering about the PD's Saturday "bonus" that I shared with morning coffee.  So am I, folks. In short, I will need much more evidence that it's a bonus and not a garden variety Saturday paper that has greeted me for years. Lots of car ads  Lots of sports.  Lots of visual candy.  

You have to think that  the promotion department labeled the Saturday delivery that way because it is true that nobody can resist the lure of a bonus.  So instead of the four-days-a- week deliveries that I'm paying for, I must now adjust to the idea that the Saturday paper is the PD's way of telling me that I deserve something more than three-day home delivery.

Whatever.

It must have been a horrifying week for the  remaining staffers who faced the awful task of designing a new "reimagined" product that would fetch more readers.  Ted Diadiun, the PD's  reader representative, tried to explain it in Sunday's column, devoting much space to how one was to download the e-edition - the replicated pages of the papery edition that eluded so many old-fashioned readers.

He directed us to the Diversions section and from then on it was a series of moving cursors, click print/downloads and various other digital exercises.    Along the way you would learn how to see a puzzle by accessing  the "share button in the blue  navigation bar"  above a puzzle that looks likes an "arrow curbing out of a rectangle".

Yadayadayada.  Talk about puzzles! (As somebody once said, "I wish I were younger so that I would know everything.")

 Sunday's edition was a cliff-diving effort by the graphics department.   Huge  color photos   were stamped across the pages to suggest a kind of gawdy modernity.   The graphics advisors have been growing in influence for at least a whole generation of declining readership. Big pictures fill a lot of  space once partly filled by text. That means less text by a thinning staff of writers.

I'm resigned to that.  But who defined bonus at the PD?

Plain Dealer: The response to its critics

THE PLAIN DEALER'S lengthy response to critics accusing it of a tardy response to the city's widespread political corruption amounted to little more than a journalistic non sola mea colpa. Although the paper has been relentless in reporting the FBI's work in turning up an avalanche of criminal activity that has already convicted some of the players, the PD defended itself from the critics who wondered why so much of the mischief went on right under its nose for so long.

Good question. And here's how Ted Diadiun, the PD's reader representative, explained the paper's late arrival on the scene in Sunday's voluminous report:

"It's easy to second-guess the coverage, or the lack of it, with the benefit of 10 years of hindsight. I was in charge of the Metro operation for several years in the' 90s myself, and I can tell you that things that seem obvious today didn't look as clear then." ,

In other words, there might have been a little smoke, but no fire. Huh? But he did concede that the paper was

"guilty of a lack of aggressiveness, of failing to put together threads of a story that a lot of people knew was out there and - perhaps - of failing to be as tough as it should have been on people its journalists liked and thought were doing a good job."

True enough. But who were the people that knew the story was " out there" and did nothing to protect the public trust?

Over the years there obviously have been many moving parts among the sinning pols and their beneficiaries and I find it hard to believe that not one aggrieved whistle-blower came forward with a sliver of information that would have led the paper to suit up a couple of its ace reporters to turn up the story. Cleveland politics have always been messier than normal, and more often than not, a hint that somebody might have his fingers in the cash register was a credible cue to go after it with the first team.

The paper has long had a roster of excellent reporters, some of whom ended up on another paper's honor roll. But the decision-makers at the top have been confused and overly-cautious at times and when in doubt, erred on the side of the polite conservative establishment. (See Kucinich, Dennis, for one glaring example. )

No matter how you come down on the coverage of a tattered political crowd, there can be little hope in today's media climate that the PD can improve its coverage as newsrooms, from the New York Times and CBS to the Weekly Reader continue to shrink. As I have lamented many times before, the disappearance of a healthy newspaper watchdog in any community is leading all of us down a very dark road well past the point of no return.

Of course, the PD's admitted early failure to go after a smoking gun in what turned out to be the city's biggest story of the year didn't help.