Posts Tagged news media
Perfect Solution Where New Cuyahoga County Officials Can Meet
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Media, Politicians on March 28, 2010
March 28, 2010… I have the perfect place for the new Cuyahoga County Council to meet. It shouldn’t cost a penny. County taxpayers already paid for construction. And even to furnish it!
It’s a building the County constructed in Jacobs Field.
It’s not far from the present County Administration building.
The building wasn’t even in the lease. It was a gift.
I was told at the time that there was an unsightly ramp. Such a problem. So we – thank you Michael White and Tim Hagan especially – built a 57,500 square foot administration building “to hide the ramp that would have been visible to the public from Ontario Street,” Gateway boss Tom Chema told me. I guess they didn’t think of some far less costly solution. Shrubbery perhaps?
The truth is that Dick Jacobs wanted an office building for his Cleveland Indians staff. And what Dick Jacobs wanted our County Commissioners and Chema gave him.
So why doesn’t the County ask the Dolan family to vacate one floor of the five-story office building we built for them? (Come to think of it, maybe Matt Dolan, candidate for County Executive, could expedite this process with Larry Dolan, team owner and his dad.)
Back in 1990 I reported on this give-away. Neither The Plain Dealer nor any of the hot shot TV news stations touched it. Is that unusual?
Here are some of the facts:
The building, not called for in original plans or lease, cost us $7 million. That included furnishings. Yes, we even furnished it for Jacobs. It cost $900,000. Telephones, desks, computers, etc. All free.
Jacobs, of course, certainly knew the value of such real estate.
Here’s what I wrote in the Free Times at the time:
“Downtown real estate developer Dick Jacobs, of course, knows the value of that Gateway gift. Indeed, Jacobs, owner of the new Society (now Key) Center a few blocks away, asks tenants to pay $38 a square foot in his building. (His Society Center was property tax free, as was – and is – the stadium and the free building. You see rich people are not expected to pay taxes as the rest of us are made to do.)
“If Gateway did the same, instead of charging no rent, the space given Jacobs in the administration building would be worth $2,185,000 a year. With no increase over the 25-year lease that would be more than $54 million in free rent.”
Since 1990, that would have meant more than $30 million to the County. Didn’t happen.
And there’s a perfect table for the new commissioners to meet around.
At Jacobs’ request the County provided an 18-foot by 5-foot boat shaped table for a conference room. That should fit for the 11-member Council. If not, I’m sure it could be expanded.
The table had an ash veneer, according to the plans. I don’t think some of the special treatment asked by Jacobs will interfere with government business. The table called for inlaid wood shaped to replicate the stitching of a baseball.
There might be one problem. The table also called for a metal etching of the racist symbol of Chief Wahoo to be inlaid at each end.
I checked at the time with some firms that make custom tables. One said that with the inlays the cost would be about $10,000 for the table.
Good enough for our certainly new tax-conscious commissioners, don’t you think?
I asked Chema at the time whether he reported this magnificent gift to the Internal Revenue Service. “Absolutely not,” Chema said.
So there’s plenty of room for the commission at no cost in a building we taxpayers built.
The inattentive Plain Dealer offered today (Sunday) three possible meeting places. The cost estimates for the three range from some $687,000 to $1.2 million. The PD story is here:
Time to save some public money. Time for a billionaire family to give back to the community. Time, indeed, for us to assert our public will.
C’mon Matt, you can help. Have a talk with dad.
DeMarino Slams Old Bosses on Fox 8 I-Team Deceptions
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, People on March 15, 2010
March 15, 2010… You might wonder why Mark DeMarino gives a damn about Fox News’ WJW-TV, Channel 8, his former employer. But he does. He can’t shake the idea that journalism is supposed to be about something meaningful.
In this day of cost cutbacks – some possibly necessary, many seemingly simply to cut costs – newspaper and broadcast outlets would be the target of a typical I-Team investigation. About not delivering what is promised. Bait and switch.
That’s what prompted DeMarino to fire off a blistering email to news director Sonya Thompson and other station managers.
It’s a message that shouts, “I’m through with journalism because that’s not what it is anymore.”
DeMarino – an award winning reporter/researcher who left Ch. 8 about this time last year – charged the station management with deception by tagging ordinary stories with the I-Team brand. It’s a brand he helped make valuable.
DeMarino said in an email to me that he was upset because the station “was pulling a fast one with its viewers. It has never told viewers that it’s eliminated its investigative unit, yet, station management wants to benefit from the I-Team brand by calling these general assignment type stories “I-Team” stories when, in fact, they are not.”
He cited in conversation one recent example of misuse of an I-Team report. The report last week had Lorrie Taylor trying to make an investigative piece about Yazeed Essa’s empty jail cell. (He was convicted last week of murdering his wife Rosemarie.) The item is entitled “I-Team exclusive – Inside Essa’s Jail Cell.” It’s hard to make a relevant investigation of showing a cushioned jail cell bed though Taylor made the best of the assignment.
DeMarino told Thompson, “Any news operation must be an honest broker of information, sad to say your continued labeling of general assignment stories, by either Bill Sheil or Lorrie Taylor, as I-Team is deceptive, misleading and a disservice to your viewers and sponsors.”
He notes in an email to me that money wouldn’t be a problem if management would “take a critical look at some of the huge salaries paid their anchors and the number of newsroom managers.” If television stations did examine these high salaries, “there is money to fund a legitimate I-Team unit,” wrote DeMarino.
DeMarino was a newsman for some 33 years in radio and television, most of it in Cleveland. In disgust, he took a buyout at Ch. 8 last year after working at the station for 16 years. He has served as investigative reporter for Carl Monday and Tom Merriman in addition to Sheil and Taylor.
“The city’s news business lost another dedicated newsman whose long and distinguished service – back to the 1970s – went more or less generally unobserved,” I wrote a year ago when he departed Ch. 8.
DeMarino was researcher and behind-the-scenes reporter for the I-Team, putting together the investigative guts of reports that were hosted by a team of on-air persons.
DeMarino’s passion for his job still comes through in his message to the station management.
“It’s bait and switch,” he writes of the use of the I-Team brand on regular stories. The regular news pieces are given the I-Team branding to suggest that the reports are the result of investigative reporting.
The former I-Team researcher finds this reprehensible.
“It’s a knockoff Coach purse,” DeMarino writes, borrowing the term from an investigation the team did on scam artists selling knockoffs of the brand named pocketbooks.
“The stories are threadbare, faded, and thrown together in a rush. Either invest in people and resources to resurrect the I-Team, or leave it alone,” he wrote to Thompson.
“What you are doing is cheap, lazy and cowardly,” wrote DeMarino, leaving nothing of his feelings to the imagination.
Thompson did not respond to an email request for her comment. Oddly, Ch. 8’s website doesn’t have a telephone number and in the yellow pages under television stations, Fox 8 isn’t listed, though other TV stations are.
One has to note with a bit of irony, however, that if you call the I-Team’s telephone number (432-4228) who answers? Mark DeMarino’s voice still responds, “This is the Fox 8 I-Team. Leave your name and your number… we’ll try to get right back to you.”
DeMarino shared in numerous awards, including the coveted Alfred I. DuPont/Columbia Journalism Award for broadcast excellence in 2006. It is comparable to the Pulitzer Awards in print journalism.
The DuPont award resulted from an investigation and expose of the Cleveland school system. DeMarino, in an undercover role, filmed school bus drivers sitting idly, using school buses to pick up girl friends and on personal shopping tours. It was estimated the probe resulted in some $4 million in savings for the schools.
The school bus expose also won a prestigious Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) national award “for exposing millions of dollars in waste, gross mismanagement and cover-up in the Cleveland Municipal School District.” It was a multi-part investigation that had undercover film of some 200 bus drivers at the bus station that did little more than play pool while on the payroll. At the same time, teachers were laid off by the school system.
A competitor, Tom Beres of WKYC-TV, Channel 3, said of DeMarino upon his leaving Ch. 8, “His connections, insight and institutional memory and historical background will be missed.” Beres said DeMarino was “grossly underappreciated,” a statement I couldn’t agree with more.
Too bad. But what can you expect these days from local news.