It’s hard being Terry Egger, Plain Dealer publisher, when two of your top columnists, Phillip Morris, resident black dude, and John Petkovic, resident rocker, currently on furlough…er…..”vacation” as he put it, spend a Wednesday night fellating you over beers at the Bier Markt on W. 25^thin in order to keep their jobs. Tough work.

 

            Especially when literally beneath your feet at the Speakeasy Bar, a hundred Cleveland 20-30 somethings are simultaneously and publicly announcing to the world “I Will Stay If…” The event was an initiative launched by the Great Lakes Urban Exchange, led by Detroiter Sarah Szurpicki. So desperate to keep their city alive, they turn up mid-week to hear Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone and activists Randell McShepard and Lillian Kuri talk about why they’ll stay in this one newspaper town. None of them knew the one newspaper’s publisher was upstairs, ignoring them, drowning sorrows with Morris and Petkovic.

            Genna Petrolla, who organized the Cleveland event, emailed her friend, the PD’s Petkovic, well before the event to let him know.  But instead of sitting downstairs with a notebook, Petkovic huddled with Egger and Morris upstairs over beers, commiserating about their lot as print journalists in a digital world, woe is them, while the event below them begged for their attention, or any at all.

            Downstairs, the event came and went. Detroiter Szurpicki came upstairs to meet Egger, and wonder aloud why the PD would ignore this event, when the PD covered a similar event in another town. The guilt trip must have worked; before long, all three PD playas were downstairs, dutifully writing their “I will stay if…” reasons. Such hard work that must have been for them.

            When I confronted them about the hypocrisy of grumbling about readership declining when a real grassroots movement to save Cleveland was occurring in the same building, Egger fled. He was last seen scurrying out the front door checking a Blackberry. Petkovic kept protesting to have his unmolested beer with friends. And Phillip Morris announced, twice, that he was about to, and I quote, “take you outside and kick your ass.”

            Detroiter Sarah Szurpicki probably didn’t know that her friend, Genna Petrolla, lived in a town whose newspaper’s publisher, and two of his top writers, would behave like children ten feet above their event, or that they would lie about why they weren’t bothered to attend the event they knew was happening in the basement below them as they threw back a few. But Sarah did meet them, look into their eyes, tell them about her event, and was left to hope that something might actually come of it.

            Judy Carlson, one of those young Clevelanders who bothered, said of the event, “I’m here to see if anything will come of one of these things… for once.”  Hope Judy’s not relying on the city’s newspaper to help.

- Tim Russo tim@clevelandindependent.com