Very sad day in Cleveland about those Plain Dealer layoffs, but also sad for those autoworkers and bankers, government workers and other good people in our state who are getting kicked in the teeth by the brutal changes in our economy. I know the big words and brains in Washington are fixated on some kind of economic stimulation program. They might be wiser to think of health care reform and insurance coverage for families. Many of those out of work have nothing. The PD people, I have heard, lose their coverage upon layoff. That is a horrible spot to be in. Clearly, it is time for some kind of universal coverage for Americans and Ohioans. The news about newspapers these days is heartbreaking — but almost all news we hear on the jobs front jobs is heartbreaking these days.

I certainly can relate to your sentiments about newspapers. I even love the smell of newsprint and getting ink on my fingers. (I love the way my wife cocks her head slightly when she’s absorbed in a story in the morning.) It’s appalling to see the whole industry flailing like this.

Having been through the closing of a publication, I feel for the journalists who now have to now pack up their families and leave Cleveland.

No one is going to snap up these 27 people and you and I both know that the freelance market in Cleveland can never begin to make up for losing a guild job.

On the other hand, they’ve all known what was going on and have chosen to roll the dice rather than get out ahead of the rush.

Part of the problem is that journalists like you and me suffer from the handicap of, as you write, loving news. We make the fatal mistake of thinking that most Americans love news too.

They don’t. Most Americans love distraction from the banality of their existence. If we can read/listen/watch about the suffering of Brittany, then we feel better about ourselves.

We don’t, in the main, want to have anything to do with economics, science, politics beyond the horse race or any of the other boring subjects we hated in school.

Unfortunately, those are all the topics that make up real news.

And there’s a very basic reason why we don’t like real news: real news involves the potential of change and we hate any change that might nudge us out of our personal comfort zone.

I’ve been talking about this change since I was an undergraduate in the Journalism program at Ohio University in the early ’80s. There are no surprises here. Just the cold water in the face of reality.

B’shalom,

Jeff