Only the Plain Dealer could be handed such a journalist prize as a sitting judge ordering one of their reporters arrested and still come out looking like a chump. All they had to do was cry, injustice! Instead, the paper is left looking sullied again.

            The closest thing I can compare this to is the Gosselin divorce. Remember when Jon left Kate and everyone was like, “Good. She’s a bitch. Good for him. I hope he lands on his feet.” Then Jon goes out and starts grinding on some young girl, while his eight kids are hangin’ back at home and in the space of a week we were siding with Kate? Kate!

            Anyway, here’s what happened.

            On March 16, Cuyahoga Court of Common Pleas judge Shirley Strickland Saffold ordered the arrest of PD reporter Gabriel Baird. Baird had written a story back in November in which he sited a confidential psychological evaluation of alleged serial killer Anthony Sowell and he wasn’t giving up his source. Now, don’t fret about Baird. This is the kind of stuff journalists salivate over, the sort of event that makes one’s career.

            A little background on Judge Saffold. Remember that trumped-up case against the Board of Elections workers who got in trouble for conducting the 2004 recount the way Bill Mason’s buddy Reno Oradini told them to? Well, it eventually ended up with her and she handled the case to its fair and balanced conclusion. She came out of that ordeal looking like the only honest player in the bunch.

            Normally, she’s a straight shooter.

            So, why’d she get all up in the Plain Dealer’s grille?

            Well, look no further than the story printed the next day, written by junior reporter Leila Atassi. The article was a full-on attack, ending with a litany of very old items about Saffold’s rare missteps. Saffold knew well that those older stories were originally reported by a “journalist” named James Ewinger. Ewinger’s animosity for the judge became so heated at one time that Saffold claims he almost assaulted her.

            Then, Saffold discovered the person who had leaked the documents to the Plain Dealer was another sitting judge, Timothy McGinty. She backpedaled, suddenly claiming the leaked information would not harm the case and calling the hounds off of Baird. Sitting in the courtroom that day, as if to taunt her, was James Ewinger.

            It’s not the first weird obsession Ewinger has had for an outspoken judge. He recently spent a couple years pursuing Portage County judge John Plough for everything from answering his phone on the bench (gasp!) to bringing his dogs into the courthouse (huh?). You have to know a little about Portage County politics to understand that going after Plough and nobody else is like busting into Dachau to arrest the staff cook for not washing his hands. Certainly, his presence in Saffold’s courtroom could and should be viewed as intimidation at this point.

            I also smell a hint of Bill Mason in all this, like some cheap aftershave. Mason, after all, had a soft-on for prosecuting the women from the Board of Elections scandal. But maybe that’s my own paranoia. Still, Leila Atassi is one of Metro Editor Chris Quinn’s favorite writers, Quinn being close buds with 1^st Assistant Prosecutor Michael O’Malley. And both Leila and Chris’s names were all over that story from December about Mason’s connections to a weird contract involving Pointe Blank Solutions—the story that went online without the part about Mason’s political connection to the firm. Surely, just an oversight. Judge McGinty, himself, runs with Mason’s Mean Machine.

            This behavior within the once-proud daily paper is only getting worse.

            On March 18, reporter Henry Gomez wrote a story on Jimmy Dimora. “Jimmy Dimora is not too proud to beg,” begins the article. “even if the guy he is begging is a member of the news media that the embattled Cuyahoga County commissioner has come to despise.” Gomez goes on to refer to himself as “yours truly”. It was not reportage. It was biased opinion masquerading as fact. At some point in time, the Plain Dealer has given up and become a tabloid.

            By the way, if Dimora escapes this mess unscathed, he may well end up owning the daily paper. After all, they’ve insinuated Dimora’s the target of an FBI investigation, without Dimora ever being named by the feds, much less indicted.

            Don’t get me wrong, what Saffold did was ludicrous. Shameful. But the Plain Dealer reacted like a teenager instead of an institution of truth. What could have been a Pulitzer turned into yet another snafu.

-James Renner James@clevelandindependent.com