By: Larry Durstin

THE RECENT PLAIN DEALER front-page endorsement of the Issue 6 reform proposal should have been a surprise to no one. Those who have closely watched the PD’s coverage of the debate surrounding Cuyahoga County reform were aware that the local daily has served as a PR arm for Issue 6 and its backers, led by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason and the perennially inept county Republican Party.

Clinging to the sensationalistic “County in Crisis” theme as if it were a veritable life raft for its dwindling readership and decade-long slog into irrelevance, the PD hit journalistic rock bottom a few weeks ago when it ran the blaring front-page headline, “Issue 6 Supporters Say it Provides Framework to Prevent Corruption.” It’s quite obvious that the practice of using headlines as campaign ads has been a thinly veiled staple of the PD for years, but this particularly blatant banner was nothing short of the Full Monty.

Of course, the paper has never been shy about executing a narrow agenda. But until its recent reinvention as righteous crusader against corruption, the PD has been a shameless lapdog for the area’s big-time developers and the county’s political/corporate establishment. In fact, looking over the past 20 years, it’s difficult to find a large development project that the Plain Dealer did not blindly support, no matter what the cost to the taxpayer: Tower City, Gateway, the Browns stadium, the delayed Flats East Bank project, any-and-all convention center proposals, the still-not-off-the-contaminated-ground new Juvenile Justice Center and the proposed Medical Mart.

A telling example of the paper’s convoluted manipulation of politicians and development projects involves the role it played in the disastrous Ameritrust/county administration venture in 2004-2005. In simple terms, here’s how it went: Upset at how county commissioner Tim McCormack interfered with a convention center project in 2003, the PD and the city’s business establishment recruited downtown development rubber-stamper Tim Hagan to unseat McCormack. Elected, in his own words, to “get things done,” Hagan quickly spearheaded the effort to build a new county administration complex. Conducting much of their business in secret, the commissioners considered bids from six different development entities before finally deciding upon the group headed by Dick Jacobs.

During this time, I was covering the story for the Free Times and was told by insiders familiar with the process that the Staubach Company, the Washington D.C-based consulting group which had been chosen to evaluate the bids, was essentially in lockstep with Hagan and Jimmy Dimora to pick the Jacobs plan, even though it was apparent that his site was at or near the bottom of its five competitors in terms of viability. At the time, reporter Joan Mazzolini was covering the story for the PD and was privy to much of the same information as I had, but chose to remain uncritical of the secrecy and potential unfairness involved in the selection process. In the end, the PD enthusiastically supported choosing Jacobs’ Ameritrust site – a choice that has become a fiasco and is currently being looked into by the Feds in their ever-growing county corruption probe.

Of course, now the PD is decrying the evils of that selection process while trumpeting the need for Issue 6 and Bill Mason to come to the county’s rescue. What it hasn’t examined, however, is the nature of Mason’s connection with J. Kevin Kelley, his fellow Parma politico, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy, public corruption and bribery. Or how this latest power grab by Mason is similar to his ill-fated attempt (in conjunction with his former roommate Pat O’Malley) to take the leadership of the Democratic Party away from Dimora and Frank Russo a decade ago via Mason’s “D2K” organization. Or why, in its relentless coverage of county corruption, when the paper finally got around to mentioning the ethics issues swirling around Mason, it did so in a brief story buried in the Metro section and with no screeching “County in Crisis” tag in sight.

One of the more amusing pastimes in perusing the Plain Dealer is to observe how many times one of its columnists – most notably “reader representative” Ted Diadum – attempts to point out how important daily newspapers are in the ever-changing new-media world. (Actually, the desperation pulsing through these overwrought justifications is downright embarrassing.) But the PD’s naval-gazing apologists are actually right. Dailies are critical. It’s just unfortunate that Cleveland doesn’t have a genuinely tough-minded, fair, and responsible one.