Talk:The Plain Dealer

controversies

I would like to see an update to the article regarding the Judge Saffold lawsuit. More info here: http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/news/30307/ 65.43.181.37 (talk) 17:39, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

criticisms of the PD

I would like to see a section that is criticisms of the Plain Dealer, and will happily write it myself, but I would appreciate al the help I can get. (unsigned comment by FozzyMaple 23:10, 24 July 2006

I consolidated all the Criticism and Controversies into one section, but did not add any material. (deleted one redundant sentence) JimmB 16:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

citations

i added a bunch of citations to fix up the article, but didn't get all the {{Fact}} tags. If anyone else wants to give it a stab, have at it. clevelandguy, 22:06, 5 June 2006 (EDT).

Read for context

This site fails to acknowledge that the company that runs Cleveland.com (Advance Ohio) and the Plain Dealer operates two newsrooms - one union and one non-union. All past awards were won by the Plain Dealer newsroom, the union newsroom which oversees publication of the print product. Both newsrooms publish to Cleveland.com with writers indicating which newsroom they work for in their byline. There truly should be two separate pages for the different newsrooms because, as is apparent if you take the time to READ THE NEW ADDITIONS BEFORE PASSING JUDGMENT, they operate as two separate entities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Newsman12 (talk • contribs) 22:14, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

readership

Does anyone know the source of the claim in the third sentence of the article, which states that Greater Cleveland "is ranked #1 in the country for Sunday newspaper readership percentage (75.4% of total adults) and #2 in daily newspaper readership percentage (62.6% of total adults), second only to New York City in the weekday editions"?

Thanks in advance. Mamawrites 23:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

From The PD's advertising literature: Source: Scarborough Research Multi-Market Study R2, Nov. 2003; Demographics USA 2003 Mar 21 2006

political leanings

I would just like to see verification that the Plain Dealer has 'right wing' editorial content. I know it endorsed President Bush in 2000. But I won't necessarily say that it makes a paper right wing. Unless you think that the article of every newspaper that supported Kerry should include a section calling the paper 'left wing'.Montco 02:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

It should also be noted that the paper is frequently criticized from the other side of the political spectrum for the perceived liberal slant of most of its columnists, particularly those who appear in the metro and features sections. On the other hand, its local op-ed often features the opinions of the hard-right Kevin O'Brien, a member of the editorial board.

Finally, as regards the newspaper's corporate voice, as expressed through its unsigned editorials: Certainly, The Plain Dealer has moved far from the reliably Democratic partisan it was until FDR ("Th' Plain Daler for news" was the choice of the Democratic bartender in Finley Peter Dunne's columns) but it endorses a mix of Democrats and Republicans, and its stand on public issues does not adhere to either party's platform -- its determination to reveal the names of those who own concealed-carry gun permits, when the state limited the release of those lists only to news organizations, has drawn fierce criticism from the pro-gun side, for example.

As with all businesses, the top manager -- in this case, the publisher -- retains the final say over major decisions including editorial endorsements. This common-sense fact -- that newspaper editorial boards usually are not democracies -- was lost on those who expressed outrage when most members of the edit board (note: the board is composed mostly of people whose only job is to write editorials; with one exception, they do not have any authority over the news columns) preferred to endorse Kerry over Bush, but the paper instead endorsed no one. This no-decision was likely because the publisher preferred the Republican. But, to be fair, at many other newspapers -- and, indeed, most companies -- where there was a split between the top manager and an advisory board, the result would not have been a compromise but rather the imposition of the will of the executive. (Remember the old story about Lincoln's cabinet?)

In fact, The Plain Dealer has a mix of ardent liberals, ardent conservatives/libertarians and middle-of-the-roaders. Its corporate voice tends toward the right ... but outside of Ben & Jerry's, so do the vast majority of American companies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.183.169.57 (talk • contribs)

• As far as proof, see here and here (these aren't the best examples, but the ones that I can find most easily - and the Free Times is pretty liberal in its own right). It's not that the Plain Dealer is exclusively conservative - it's editorial pages aren't those of the Wall Street Journal, for example - but that it is somewhat conservative in a city that fairly reliably votes Democratic. As the anon pointed out, the overall paper is somewhat balanced, but the editorial pages are generally conservative - and while the editorial page will endorse Democrats and Republicans, the Democratic endorsements tend to be in non-competitive races that are already won. --DMG413 02:45, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Discontinued Sections

Can someone please add to the list of Discontinued Sections of the Plain Dealer? Thanks --Josh 00:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Plain Dealer masthead.png

Image:Plain Dealer masthead.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 22:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

File:Plain Dealer front page.png Nominated for speedy Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Plain Dealer front page.png, has been nominated for speedy deletion for the following reason: Wikipedia files with no non-free use rationale as of 27 November 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; you should have time to contest the deletion (although please review deletion guidelines before doing so). The best way to contest this form of deletion is by posting on the image talk page. If the image is non-free then you may need to provide a fair use rationale If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale, then it cannot be uploaded or used. If the image has already been deleted you may want to try Deletion Review This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 00:44, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Unwieldy hatnote

Usually when a hatnote grows that big, it's a good sign that a separate dab page is needed. Viriditas (talk) 09:08, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Plain Dealer/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: TonyTheTiger (talk · contribs) 08:13, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

• I will review this.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:13, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
• The tool box shows 3 deadlinks and a circular links problem with a redirect.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:04, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
• The WP:LEAD does not summarize the article. It fails WP:WIAGA 1B.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:11, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
• The article has several paragraphs and subsections that are entirely uncited. We need WP:ICs as WP:RSs. It fails WP:WIAGA 2B/2C.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:11, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
• Fix the bare URLs.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
• I don't consider it very likely that the history section is very comprehensive. I feel that this article probably fails WP:WIAGA 3A.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:18, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
• This does not seem to tell us about the history of the headquarters and main printing locations.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
• I am FAILing this article.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Plain Dealer/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Wugapodes (talk · contribs) 01:41, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Will review. Wugapodes (talk) 01:41, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

---

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Cites reliable sources, where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Comments

If the comment is numbered, it must be addressed for the article to pass, if it is bulleted, it's an optional suggestion or comment that you don't need to act on right now.
When I quote things, you can use ctrl+f to search the page for the specific line I quoted.

1. Readership in lead doesn't match readership in the infobox.

2. The lead may not adequately summarize the content of the article.

3. "less than 50 years after Moses Cleaveland landed on the banks of the Cuyahoga River in The Flats" what does this have to do with the subject?

4. "It also assured readers that the stories that would formerly have appeared in the Sunday Magazine would be integrated into other areas of the paper." This needs to be rephrased or removed. Either the stories were integrated or they weren't; the statement that they assured readers of such doesn't add any information.

5. "On August 5, 2013, the Northeast Ohio Media Group launched and The Plain Dealer Publishing Company was formed. Northeast Ohio Media Group operates cleveland.com and Sun News and is responsible for all multimedia ad sales and marketing for The Plain Dealer, Sun News and cleveland.com. It also provides content to The Plain Dealer, cleveland.com and Sun News. The Plain Dealer Publishing Company provides content and publishes in print seven days a week. The company also provides production, distribution, finance, information technology, accounting and other support services for the Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and Northeast Ohio Media Group." This paragraph feels like coat rack information and is only tangentially related to the subject.

6. Why is awards and honors so high? Also, why is it in a list as opposed to prose? There must be something written about the content that earned them these awards.

7. The Bureaus section seems to be entirely WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS

8. Major Sections (which should probably WP:USEPROSE), only cites one source, and it is for the discontinuation of one section.

9. The Design section cites no source.

10. The Employees section cites no source. I assume the source is the paper itself but that should be made explicit.

11. I'm also unclear why there's an employees section at all, and why it is a list rather than prose. Ideally we won't have an exhaustive list of everyone employed by them, and if we're going out of our way to mention the employees, we should probably say a little more about them.

12. "The Plain Dealer has been criticized by liberal columnists for staking out generally conservative positions on its editorial page, despite serving a predominantly Democratic readership base." This should be explicitly sourced. As it is likely controversial and contrary to expectations.

13. "The news coverage is generally more neutral, with national and international news often culled from wire services, including the New York Times'." This has no source.

14. Criticism and controversy sections tend to be non-neutral, and probably cherry picked. The question often is why they can't be incorporated into prose. Further, why is the largest section of prose only about controversies? Why is there no actual coverage of what the newspaper frequently writes about? I doubt that a two time pulitzer winning publication and winner of "numerous" AP awards can only have coverage of its controversies. While working to increase the prose size of the article, you may want to think about how the controversies can be worked into the newly expanded prose.

15. Fair use rational for the first August 7 image is not complete.

16. Relevence of the image on Candy is not apparent.

• There are a number of dead links. While not explicitly disallowed, they make verification difficult, especially since a number of them have no access date and no other publication information beyond the title and a URL.

Results

Not listed This article is far from satisfying any of the GA criteria (except maybe being stable). This article has multiple uncited sections, a number the links are dead and not properly formatted to make verification easy, it needs to WP:USEPROSE more as much of the article is lists, it lacks coverage of the writing and coverage of the paper such as strengths or why it won those things in the list of awards, and it seems rather non-neutral as it gives WP:UNDUE weight, particularly to controversies despite the paper winning a number of awards for journalistic achievements, none of the included images conform to criterion 6. Further, much of this was brought up in the [[../GA1|previous GA review]] and seems to not have been addressed (see diff between last reviewed version and this version). As such, I don't think putting it on hold will be productive. Address these issues and renominate and it will probably fair much better. If you have any questions, you can comment here or on my talk page. Happy editing! Wugapodes (talk) 23:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Planned reorg/rewrite

It seems apparent that this article, which is on a significant & timely topic, needs a significant reorganization and rewrite. In addition to several points made in the GA reviews above, the article has an ad-hoc feel (which is a normal result of numerous edits by numerous people over years) - its organization is slapdash, and circular, with certain topics (eg, circulation, ownership, reduction of days delivered, certain rounds of layoffs) arising repeatedly in multiple sections, while the relevance of parts (eg, NEOMG, see coatrack comments) is not adequately explained. I have been taking a first stab, in evening and weekend time, at a major reorganization and overhaul. Nearly all material from the current page is kept except for a few extraneous details, eg Moses Cleaveland landing in the Flats, but redundancies and outdated descriptions are eliminated, and a more consistent story organically emerges. My reorg addresses some but certainly not all points from the two recent GA reviews. I hope to have it completed and published by this weekend. The current proposed organization is below, and you are welcome to look at a working, incomplete draft of my work in my personal temporary "scratchpad" page here: [scratchpad]

I welcome any reactions to or comments on these plans, either on this page or in messages to me. Thanks.

Proposed New Contents

   1 History
       1.1 Founding
       1.2 Name
       1.3 Ownership history
       1.4 Awards and honors
       1.5 Editors (Editors-in-Chief)
   2 Shrinking in the 21st century
       2.1 Declining circulation
       2.2 Reductions in newspaper size and delivery
       2.3 Closure and transfer of bureau[x]
       2.4 Elimination of staff
   3 Other facts
       3.1 Pricing and distribution
       3.2 PolitiFact Ohio
   4 Criticism and controversies: The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com
       4.1 Political leanings (since 1864)
       4.2 Publishing concealed weapons permit holder lists (2005)
       4.3 "Held stories" controversy (2005)
       4.4 Music critic sidelining (2008)
       4.5 Shirley Strickland Saffold (2010)
       4.6 Removal of debate video (2014)
       4.7 Tamir Rice coverage (2014)
   5 References
   6 Further reading
   7 External links

Sullidav (talk) 15:25, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Lede degraded by recent edit? WDYT?

Until January 13, the first sentence of this article had, from the time the article was first drafted in 2004 and this was the only thing that the article said, correctly identified the PD as "the major newspaper of Cleveland." (That phrase included the word "daily" while it was true.)

That's the best short description of the PD. See, eg from a quick Google search, this and this. There has been no other major Cleveland newspaper since the PD's last competitors, the Cleveland News and the Cleveland Press, closed in 1960 and 1982, respectively.

Recently User:Infactinteresting, among improving edits, twice changed this first sentence to drop "the" in favor of "a." (Between those edits, I changed it back.) It currently reads "The Plain Dealer is a newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio; it is a major newspaper." Aside from being redundant language and klutzy writing, I think this edit weakens the article and is a ridiculous deletion of the sentence's key point made by "the," that there is no other major newspaper of Cleveland.

So I think the lede should be reverted to the description it has essentially used since 2004, and should again say "The Plain Dealer is the major newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, United States." I'm making that edit again but to avoid an edit war, I'm also asking others through the talk page - who's right? Thanks.

Sullidav (talk) 17:02, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

It’s not a matter of right or wrong, this concerns house style, convention, grammar, and personal choice. At this time, I prefer the edits made by you, Sullidav, but there is always room for improvement. I suggest taking a look at other, similar articles, preferably of higher article quality, and seeing how they do it. Viriditas (talk) 22:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)