Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper to layoff 2 editors, several reporters from what Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. calls a 'lily White and re-segregated' newsroom, the union saying it will continue fighting.... By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog

Civil Rights icon the Rev. Jessee Jackson Sr. (right), who has called the newsrooms of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, both major newspapers in Ohio, "lily White and re-segregated"

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio- The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, has announced it will layoff 12 newsroom reporters, and photographers and two editors within the next two weeks, in addition to the 27 of the 29 unionized employees it previously announced it will layoff beginning in May, mostly its page production unit of  copy editors, page designers, and illustrators.

Exactly how many of those slated for layoffs are women or minorities is unclear. 

Speaking at a conference of the National Association of Black Journalists in August of last year, Civil Rights icon the Rev Jesse Jackson Sr. called the newsrooms of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio's second largest newspaper, "lily White and re-segregated."

Black  greater Cleveland leaders are ambivalent, some telling Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com community newpapers are a must and the layoffs are privatization of the news, and excessive. 

Other area Black leaders, some speaking on condition of anonymity, say they are more concerned with a lack of diversity at the newspaper and unfair reporting against Blacks, Black elected officials such as judges and members of Cleveland City Council in particular, and Blacks accused of crimes, whether legitimately or maliciously.

Some Democrats, including those exposed relative to an ongoing FBI and public corruption probe, say the newspaper leans Republican in its investigations and reporting, and is often times biased in its reporting against Democratic elected officials and party leaders,  Cuyahoga County a Democratic stronghold that is 29 percent Black and includes Cleveland, a largely Black major American city. 

Two employees from the production staff of 29 originally named for layoffs will be transferred to the newsroom, said Plain Dealer President and Editor George Rodrigue, who says layoffs are inevitable in the current newspaper climate as revenues from ads continue to decline while competition continues to broaden with the elevation of electronic newspapers.

Rodrigue said that while the company sympathizes with the employees who will be let go, management's key objective is "the preservation of the Plain Dealer." 

Company officials have invited the impacted employees to apply for lower-paying, non-union jobs they qualify for at Cleveland.com, which is owned by Advance Ohio, and led by Chris Quinn, the digital content editor and Cleveland.com president.

The layoffs' decision, which impacts more that a third of the newspaper's unionized staff, caps weeks of management-union negotiations since February that reached an impasse with the union contract expiring on Feb 19.

The replaced  page production unit will be centralized out of the state with the union jobs outsourced from the Plain Dealer's parent company of Advance Publications, which oversees them now,  to its subsidiary company of Advance Local, a move that has upset the Guild, a union that represents 68 Plain Dealer employees, including reporters, copy editors, designers, photographers, and illustrators.

The Guild is livid and has accused the newspaper and its hierarchical decision makers of trading local news for a centralized unit removed from the community, and of ignoring the union's  proposal for more subscribers to reduce the number of layoffs, and strategies for keeping the news centrally located.

Editor since January of 2015 following a shake-up and mass layoffs of more than 50 employees in 2013, including reporters, photojournalists, and columnists,  Rodrigue said that in spite of the layoffs "the Plain Dealer will remain a local institution."

The Guild said in a statement that "as the journalists who produce Cleveland’s newspaper, we’re asking for your help, [and ] we are losing experienced reporters and fear that it is only the beginning."

More than 450 music fans and supporters joined members of the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild-CWA, Local 1 for a sold-out show at the Beachland Ballroom concert club in Cleveland on Feb. 9, among them Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore Federation of Labor, and former Local 1 President Dick Peery, a former reporter and a Plain Dealer retiree who remains passionate about union rights and union issues.

Founded in 1872, the Plain Dealer has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Ohio, and had roughly  250,000 daily readers and 790,000 readers on Sundays before it switched to a four-day delivery newspaper in 2015, including Sundays. 

Two years earlier, in 2013, the newspaper reported daily readership of 543,110 and a Sunday's  readership of 858,376, a drop of nearly 50 percent of daily readers from 2013 to 2015 when it began under the leadership of Rodrigue with a reduced delivery week, and more than 50 fewer employees. 

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.