By Karl Kimbrough, Cleveland Urban News.Com Sportswriter

CLEVELAND,Ohio-Are the Cavaliers getting better or worst as an NBA basketball team serving the major metropolitan city of Cleveland since temporarily losing Kyrie Irving (pictured) to an injury last month? Is Irving's replacement, Jeremy Pargo (pictured), effectively stepping up to the plate?

Before Kyrie Irving's finger fracture that sideline the point guard who was drafted by Cleveland as a first all around pick in 2011, a year after Lebron James left the team and joined The Miami Heat, the Cavs had won two games and lost eight.Since then, in eight games, they are two and six. After Kyrie's injury most observers probably looked at the Cavs as a definite high lottery team this year and thought they would be almost unteachable.

Let's face it, entering this season Irving was the only star quality player on the team. So if anyone on the roster thought they deserved more attention this was their opportunity. He has done so much for the team offensively, creating his own shot and facilitating for others. Even more, Irving would be the go to player in crunch time, at the end of games. What would they do without him?

Coach Byron Scott decided to insert little used Jeremy Pargo at Irving's position. Pargo was acquired in a trade this summer and had only appeared in two games this season before starting in place of the injured Irving.

When asked why he chose Pargo, Scott told reporters that he chose him because  in comparison to other considered "he plays better defense."

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Publisher, Editor-n-Chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper

CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, will layoff a third of its 168 newsroom staff next year Guild President Harlan Spector told union members in an email today.

Spector said that management had notified him that some 58 union positions of the Northeast Ohio Guild Local One are subject to either layoff or an offer at Cleveland.com, the newspaper's online news venue which brings in a fraction of the revenue the print newspaper gets.

The Guild includes reporters, columnists, photographers, designers and some editors.

On Sunday Spector and former Guild president and retired Plain Dealer Reporter Richard Peery met with a group of Cleveland area majority Black community activist leaders and some Black elected officials at Lil Africa on Cleveland's largely Black east side of town and those in attendance voted 2-to-1 to  back the union on the issue before them, and called for Advance Publishing, the newspaper's owner,  to keep the Plain Dealer a daily print publication instead of going to three-days-a-week as contemplated.

But the activists said that their support is contingent upon the promise that Guild members will push for fair play for the Black community, something Spector promised community activists.

"Yes," said Spector to the question posed by community activists at the forum on whether he would push the union to demand fair coverage in the Black community if supported.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Publisher, Editor-n-Chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper

CLEVELAND,Ohio- Community activists will protest on Tuesday, Dec 4 at 11:00 am in front of the Jane Edna Hunter Building for Cuyahoga County Family and Children Services, 3955 Euclid Ave in Cleveland, over the neglect by the agency and Cuyahoga County officials in the murder case of three-year-old Emilliano Terry (pictured), which followed cries for help from the agency by his mother, 20-year-old Camilia Terry.

"Ohio Communities United will be gathering in front of the Jane Edna Hunter Building on Tuesday Dec 4, 2012 at 11 am to protest the failure of this system of both mother and child, Camillia and Emilliano Terry," said Community Activist Mariah Crenshaw in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com. "We ask people to join us and to invite others in the community to hold Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services Chief Administrator Patricia Rideout and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald accountable for the death of that baby."

Community Activist Mary Keith said that "legislative policy changes are needed.'

The elder Terry is in the county jail on a $2 million bond and is expected to be indicted tomorrow by a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury on  charges that she  murdered her son and put him in a trash dump outside of her apartment building on Cleveland's east side where she lived with her two other younger children, both now in foster care. Camilia Terry, a foster care survivor herself,  had allegedly told county social workers and other employees that she was overburdened and wanted her three children put up for adoption.

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Led by Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church Senior Pastor Rev E. Theophilus Caviness (pictured), who is also 1st vice president of the Cleveland NAACP and the executive director of the Cleveland Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a small but influential group of Cleveland area Black ministers, labor officials and community activists met at a Glenville area church Tuesday night to promote the candidacy of State Sen. Nina Turner(D-25) (pictured) as Ohio’s next Secretary of State. They hope to convince Turner, a former Cleveland Ward 1 council person and a Cleveland Democrat to take on Republican Jon Husted for the seat in 2014.

Other influential ministers at the meeting were Bishop F.E. Perry, Rev. Tyrone Davis, Rev. Larry Harris and Rev. Dan Smith.

No African American Democrat has ever been elected to a statewide office in Ohio, though some have been appointed like Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Evette McGee Brown, who lost her seat to Republican Sharon Kennedy in November.