Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog, which are also top in the Midwest in Black digital news.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio-
Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, a Youngstown area Democrat and former presidential candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination, is calling for federal relief for local newspapers nationwide during the next coronavirus aid package, support that follows massive layoffs this year by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, and the dismantling and reselling of the Youngstown Vindicator in 2019.
"When you see the demise of local media and local reporting, it's a huge problem," said Ryan, who emphasized the necessity of an operating media that keeps an eye on the public and that has the tools to continue "keeping up a level of transparency."
The Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act, provides stimulus monies and other federal relief in response to COVID-19, CARES 2, the fifth payout now being debated in Congress that will allocate billions more and follows four previous stimulus packages totaling trillions of dollars.
Local newspapers join those essentially left out of the initial stimulus supplements handed out by Congress, also including food assistance recipients first responders and public service workers, and Ryan and a host of other congressional lawmakers are fighting to make sure they are recognized for federal relief this time around.
The initiative has bipartisan support.
"Local journalism is important for us today, it's important for the future," said Democratic U.S. Sen Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, whose wife, Connie Schultz, is a former Plain Dealer columnist, and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
U.S. Rep Steve Chabot, a Cincinnati Republican, said that Congress should consider helping struggling local newspapers during the pandemic,and that, like others, newspapers are "a critical part of this economy as well."
A city of Cuyahoga County, Cleveland is a largely Black major American city of some 385,000 people.
Youngstown is a once industrial city of some 67,000 people that is located in Mahoning County, though it also extends to Trumbull County.
It is 65 miles southeast of Cleveland and roughly 41 percent Black.
The Plain Dealer laid-off 32 newsroom employees in April after massive layoffs the year before, mainly journalists and also photographers, columnists, editors, designers, and others across the spectrum.
Some of them were simply mistreated, and shoved out, the union says. Others were offered lower paying jobs at its online affiliate, Cleveland.com, and different assignments, some of them out of county.
While the News Guild called the layoffs union busting, management called them "strictly financial."
Nonetheless, it is an indication of the struggles print newspapers are facing nationwide, a devastating effect heightened by the coronavirus outbreak that has limited social gatherings, and thus media coverage, and has frightened businesses and advertisers into holding on to their monies.
The Plain Dealer, and other major newspapers nationwide, had problems long before the coronavirus.
Founded in 1872, the newspaper was once among one of 25 top newspapers in the country.
It no longer holds that status.
It is currently owned by Advance Publications.
It has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Ohio, and had roughly 250,000 daily readers and 790,000 readers on Sundays before it switched to a four-day delivery newspaper in 2015, including Sundays.
Two years earlier, in 2013, the newspaper reported daily readership of 543,110 and a Sunday's readership of 858,376, a drop of nearly 50 percent of daily readers from 2013 to 2015, and more than 50 fewer employees.
It reported a daily circulation of 246,571 copies in 2016, and circulation figures continue to decline while competition from social media and the Internet in general continues to flourish.
The latest circulation numbers from the Alliance for Audited Media reported average Sunday circulation for the first quarter of 171,404 and average circulation for Wednesdays and Fridays, the only weekdays the paper is home delivered, of 94,838.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog, which are also top in the Midwest in Black digital news.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
