A Market Square Hero

Browns vs. Steelers: And then the Browns turned back into a pumpkin

2011-12-09T00:42:00.001-06:00

I'VE LOVED THE CLEVELAND BROWNS since I could crawl, but I haven't been able to bring myself to watch a full Browns game all year. Until the Steelers game. Here are 11 idle thoughts about the 2011 Browns.

The Steelers-Browns game at Heinz Field is the first Browns game I've watched from beginning to end all year.

I fully intended to watch just 20 minutes of this one, certain the game would be far out of reach by then and the performance as dismal as ever.

To this point, I had watched about seven and a half quarters of Browns football over four games during occasional lunch outings. They are just too painful to watch all the way through anymore.

At least the Browns and Steelers looked like they belonged in the same league in this one, and the Steelers limped off the field knowing they'd been in a real football game. Until the final three minutes, that is, when the Steelers showed us why they're the Steelers and the Browns turned back into a big orange pumpkin.

As I watched the game, probably my one and only full game of the season, the following thoughts came to mind.

Watching Owen Marecic get pushed around by yet another team — and suffer his second concussion of the season — you have to again wonder why the Browns let Lawrence Vickers go. Vickers is a cement truck. Marecic is a Tonka truck.
Whatever Peyton Hillis's struggles this season, he'd probably still be respectably muscling his way through a defense behind Vickers' smashing blocks regardless.
From what I've seen and read, Pat Shurmur seems overmatched in every game. He's entirely too predictable. I think Mike Holmgren wanted someone from his own coaching tree to mentor and mold, which is why Eric Mangini had to go, but Shurmur is making all the first-year head coach mistakes that all of our other first-year head coaches made. And what fan has the tolerance for that — again?
I love Josh Cribbs but, man, does he talk too much about his role in each week's game plan.
What does it say about the season that our most memorable moment thus far is a comic declaiming the "Factory of Sadness"?
What does it say about the season that our "big fix" thus far has been the release of long snapper Ryan Pontbriand?
What does it say about fan desperation that we have such huge soft spots for our long snapper, punters and kickers?
Is it just me, or do you also think the "Factory of Sadness" guy jinxed Pontbriand?
I wish the Browns had a player like Brett Keisel. He's like Bob Golic and Lyle Alzado rolled into one.
When the Browns sent Ben Roethlisberger into the locker room, I got nostalgic for the day Turkey Joe Jones dumped Terry Bradshaw on his head. Then James Harrison almost popped Colt McCoy's head off like a dandelion bloom. (Why, why, why did they send McCoy back in?!)
My friends in Chicago sometimes ask me if I ever think of the Baltimore Ravens as "the old Browns." No ... but I'm starting to think of 1996 to 1999 as the Browns' "glory years."

Toilet Humor: City council business

2010-08-09T06:00:00.004-05:00

This untimely outburst on the Medina City Council just makes me chuckle as the wheels of government sputter and come to a laughable halt.

Cleveland Browns training camp

2010-08-08T09:07:00.017-05:00

No matter who's on the team or what their prospects are for the year (dim to bleak for 10 of the last 11 years), right about now I'm eager to see the Cleveland Browns take the field.

Cleveland Browns Family Day scrimmage 2010

No matter who's on the team or what their prospects are for the year (dim to bleak for 10 of the last 11 years), right about now I'm eager to see the Cleveland Browns take the field.

That excitement lasts for about two games, after which the mediocrity of the terribly overmatched Browns becomes apparent. Two years ago, their miserable play so disgusted me that I stopped watching midway through the season. Last year was no treat even with the late-season winning streak. How could two NFL quarterbacks be that bad?

The signing of Jake Delhomme didn't inspire me, either, prompting thoughts of Jeff Garcia, Trent Dilfer and Ty Detmer (Ty Detmer!?!).

Truth be told, however, I wanted the Browns to pick Colt McCoy over any of the other QBs in this year's draft. And Mike Holmgren reminds me of Mike Hargrove for some reason, and I think he's exactly the guy the Browns need playing the role of God in Browns-town.

Regardless of how the Browns are on the field, I watch because the team reminds me of home and my family. As a kid, I would go to a handful of home games with Dad every season. We'd pack a sack lunch of salami sandwiches, but after we crossed the pock-marked and rusty pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks near old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, we'd always buy a couple of vendor cart hot dogs, too, slathered in authentic Stadium Mustard.

Watching the Browns, reminds me of those afternoons with Dad.

LeBron leave the Cavs? Get out of town!

2010-07-08T10:34:00.003-05:00

If LeBron James goes on TV and disses Cleveland, that'll be the biggest asshole move in the history of Cleveland sports.

I’m assuming ESPN will be broadcasting live from Cleveland, perhaps outside of LeBron James’ home, during the ridiculous hourlong show to announce his free agency decision.

If he truly is going to the Miami Heat to play second banana to Dwyane Wade, that’s going to be one justifiably ugly crowd in Cleveland. The people there have given their hearts over to King James on the chance that he’ll bring a professional sports title to town, the first since the Browns NFL title in 1964.

If James, a multimillion-dollar economic engine for the city of Cleveland, is indeed leaving town, he should just call a press conference, say his piece, and go away.

But for him to be a part of a fawning, 60-minute TV special and then TURN HIS BACK on his home team and adoring fans? Why not just walk into the Q and punch every LeBron fan in the face? And for good measure, yank the LeBron-branded shoes off their feet?

Art Modell may still go down as the most despised sports figure in Cleveland history for yanking the Browns out of town, but if the reports prove accurate and tonight’s big show ends with James flying south for Miami, that’ll be the biggest asshole move in Cleveland in a long, long time.

Just for that reason, my theory has been that today is the culmination of a masterful campaign of hype and suspense around the "King James of Cleveland" brand, ending with a prime time national embrace of his hometown.

Still, everyone in Cleveland is bracing for that knife in the back. Why? Because we've all been there before.

Spill, baby, spill

2010-06-05T11:30:00.005-05:00

With the Gulf roiling in oil, check out this contemptible little chant.

Richard Roeper: 'Thuddingly dull'

2010-05-21T13:58:00.001-05:00

"Thinking takes time." Unless you work at the Sun-Times and write a column. Then thinking is mostly optional.

Former Sun-Times Media Group colleague David Rutter sums up what every hard-working journalist must think about Richard Roeper here:

"As a writer, Roeper is a cheap date who occasionally delivers, and I sincerely hope that cheap dates don't take offense at being lumped in with Roeper. The thinking-to-drivel ratio on his Sun-Times work is about one in 10, which might be a function of being stretched too thin in The Roeper Media Empire. Thinking takes time. Glibness is not a counterweight to insight."

Wish I'd written that.

Rutter read Roeper's book on gambling and pronounced it lacking both in style and substance. Just like his columns.

"Richard Roeper has managed to take a modest amount of money in real gambler terms, pretend that gambling at a $1,000-a-day clip for a month is high drama, and produce a treatise that is incomprehensibly, thuddingly dull.

"Or maybe it's only that Roeper is dull."

With all the size and spending cutbacks at the Sun-Times, space in a newspaper is hard to come by. Not only does the paper waste precious newshole on his half-assed drivel, the dollars they spend to secure such glib driblets could be better spent on, oh, I don't know, investigative reporting, maybe. Or how about simply more reporters on the street finding stories about Chicago and Chicagoans.

Courageous reporting can really help a city. But it never ceases to amaze me how the courage required to confront the problems and misplaced priorities within a paper's own news and business operation is curiously absent.

Take this job and love it?

2010-04-28T00:34:00.002-05:00

I started a new job recently. The first two days have been the best first two days of any job I've ever had.

I've started a few newspaper jobs where "helpful" individuals took it upon themselves to point out all the assholes in the room. And within a week at those jobs, I had my ear bent by half a dozen folks who needed to tell me everything and everybody that was wrong with the place.

Better yet were the folks who decided they hated me without getting to know me or my work, motivated by some deeply rooted insecurity or dysfunction.

I can think back to the first day of my last three jobs and the same thought crossed my mind at some point: "Did I make a mistake here?" In one, the work I was given was well beneath my abilities. It was like riding a little bike with training wheels. And in another, I toiled for 12 hours straight and was told "get used to this. We work like dogs."

Of course, over time I managed to carve out a niche for myself and even help make the workplaces better. At least for a little while.

But I'm still pinching myself with this new job. I immediately took a liking to the folks in my crew. And everyone I've met has been kind and helpful and upbeat. And smart as a whip. In fact, today I met a colleague who started her job three weeks ago. She practically gushed about how much fun she was having and how happy she feels.

News people, particularly those who grew up in newspapers, tend to be quirky iconoclasts. Some are downright mean, and the meanness informs their work, gives them an edge. But the worst of them are bitter, cynical broken-down shells, their wreckage made all the more pitiable by the disintegration of the newspaper business and the haphazard devastation visited upon the newsrooms by feeble publishers and other execs. So, upbeat and happy aren't familiar emotions to this lot.

But I think I can get used to this. I might even start to like being happy.

One afternoon of rage: April 20, 1999

2010-04-19T17:00:00.003-05:00

Last year, a friend threw me a gig writing a monthly history column and quiz. Being a bit of a history buff, I enjoy that. In researching one item, this video of the Columbine High School cafeteria struck me.

Embedding isn't allowed, but here's a link.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY
"Through these halls walk the finest kids in America. The students of Columbine High School." -- A phrase on the welcome page of the Columbine High School web site, 2010

April 20, 1999
One afternoon of rage

Columbine. Before 1999, this was just the home of the Rebels, just a high school in Littleton, Colo. In the decade since, the word means "high school massacre" to almost every American. Twelve teens and a teacher were killed by two troubled, tormented students armed with guns and explosives who stormed the school at lunchtime and exacted a hideous revenge on their classmates in a fury of senseless bloodshed. A grainy, black-and-white video on YouTube titled "Columbine shooting cafeteria footage," posted in 2006, has been viewed 2.7 million times. More than 14,000 comments are posted. We still talk about Columbine. We still try to wring some meaning and purpose from that violent day.

Are these missed opportunities for newspapers to create a meaningful presence in the marketplace?

2010-04-02T09:44:00.000-05:00

About three years ago, when my newspaper was planning yet another round of severe cutbacks disguised as innovative repositioning in the marketplace, I suggested to my boss that we consider three things.

1. Get involved in a handful of local niche sites designed around highly interactive local content. My first suggestion was pets and animals.

2. Develop a comprehensive online business directory, which I called Southland Marketplace, or somesuch similar moniker. Develop an entire array of outreach products connected to this, customizable according to consumers wants, needs and preferences, heavy on coupon offerings and gift certificates.

3. Create a virtual shopping experience via our web site, which I called the Virtual Mall, helping local businesses to develop an online portal for their goods and services.

Instead, the company dropped our business section, our commentary section, our twice-weekly community newspaper and more than a third of our "feet on the street" in editorial. They red-lined the predominately black communities. They wasted money on one of the publisher's cronies, a perv who ogled the busty ladies while walking around in his stocking feet, to redesign what was left of the newspaper. (A redesign that was discarded 18 months later.) And they drop-kicked my bosses out of the place. And nothing was done to move our business into other arenas.

As for the niche content, I dealt with that here in "Stop Selling Eyeballs ... or You're Screwed." (Belated thanks to Jeff Jarvis for retweeting this one with such verve.)

I've spent the last few weeks studying online business directories for a niche magazine publisher, and I'm still convinced that they can be a valuable part of any news organization's serious effort to be the go-to source for all information about its community. Today, Alan Mutter opines with great conviction on the potential of such services for newspapers. My only quibble with his argument is that Mutter's analysis assumes can offer critical qualities that by and large they actually seem to lack, namely an appreciation for and understanding of the web and the technology needed to maximize its utility.

And this week, GateHouse Media impressively launched RadarFrog ... essentially, a virtual shopping mall. Reports Editor&Publisher: "The standalone site will present special offers from national and local merchants. ... The are two levels of membership: People can sign up for free once they register or they can pay $9.99 a month for premium exclusive deals including a monthly $25 gift certificate to restaurants and online delivery services."

As the economy turns, let's hope to see what these efforts bring.

Taco Loco

2010-04-01T10:58:00.000-05:00

Moral taco? Locavore taco? How about cheap taco?

These students deconstructed the taco, tracing the origin of every component of a taco sold by a nearby vendor.

Fascinating story about globalization.

Journalist, find yourself online

2010-03-19T23:45:00.000-05:00

I recently happened across a 2009 post from Steve Buttry about building an online resume/portfolio. A nice bit of serendipity because I'm updating mine right now. I think he's being too modest about his Google map.

On Toyota's speeding deathwagons

2010-03-15T19:05:00.001-05:00

We can trust the press to put news into perspective, right?

Yeah, not so much.

Just Robert Wright at the New York Times, who writes here on the Toyota recalls:

... if you drive one of the Toyotas recalled for acceleration problems and don’t bother to comply with the recall, your chances of being involved in a fatal accident over the next two years because of the unfixed problem are a bit worse than one in a million—2.8 in a million, to be more exact. Meanwhile, your chances of being killed in a car accident during the next two years just by virtue of being an American are one in 5,244. ... So driving one of these suspect Toyotas raises your chances of dying in a car crash over the next two years from .01907 percent (that’s 19 one-thousandths of 1 percent, when rounded off) to .01935 percent (also 19 one-thousandths of one percent).

Practically everyone else has gone into hysterics on the matter.

The not-so-mighty Quinn leaves Cleveland

2010-03-14T23:00:00.002-05:00

When the Browns traded up in the draft a few years ago to take Brady Quinn, I thought they nailed it. This muscley QB gonna be the guy who puts it all together in the backfield, I figured. And a hometown kid to boot.

But Brady's Cleveland Browns experience wasn't unlike that of another hometown kid who grew up a Browns fan and got to don the Orange and Brown, Charlie Frye.

And even though Quinn was my guy, I must admit he didn't play much better than Frye, either.

Still, I thought he deserved to start the 2010 season. His opportunities to this point were so sporadic and the talent and atmosphere around him so spotty that we still haven't seen what he's capable of. Flashes of great play. Sparks of good play. Stretches of WTF? more often. But the guy never got a sustained shot.

Really, from the stands it looked like everyone struggled in offensive coordinator Brian Daboll's gameplan, which mostly seemed offensive and uncoordinated. So how can Quinn be accurately judged?

Mike Holmgren decided Brady wasn't the answer and today sent him packing in exchange for ... not much. I can respect the decision to start over, but I've got to agree with the Plain Dealer's Terry Pluto.

Jake Delhomme? WTF? I earnestly hope he proves me wrong, but Mr. Delhomme, meet Trent Dilfer. And Jeff Garcia. And Ty Detmer. I'd rather we shoot Bernie Kosar up with painkillers and put him under center this season.

Jake's gonna keep the chair warm, I think, and Holmgren will look to this year's draft to find THE BROWNS' ANSWER AT QUARTERBACK VERSION 8.0. Sam Bradford? Probably gone by the time the Browns pick. Colt McCoy? Jimmy Clausen? Tim Tebow? The naysayers pick apart Tebow's throwing motion, but I remember Kosar looked like a wounded flamingo in the backfield. And yet he was one of the winningest QBs in Browns history.

But back to Brady, who's going to the Denver Broncos, of all teams. One day, we Browns fans might be able to look on the bright side of this trade.

If Brady Quinn starts for the Broncos and sucks, we can consider this revenge for John Elway.

Change you hope to believe in

2010-03-09T11:38:00.000-06:00

Is it clear by now that "Change We Can Believe In" was just a slogan?

Obama is a standard-issue politician with a remarkable gift for oratory. But thus far he hasn't changed the game in Washington at all, and he hasn't really appeared willing to try.

He seems inclined to make the same old D.C. bargains and calculations even as he derides those tactics from his bully pulpit.

When the hairdos whine on Fox that he's brought the "Chicago Way" to D.C. ... I wish he had. The 'tude, at least. Not city's endemic corruption. Mayor Daley gets shit done. He doesn't give a crap what you think. He does what he does. Bulldoze an airport. Done. Give away all the parking meters. Done. Anyone want to run Midway Airport? Let's get it done. Obama ain't no Daley.

But he's speaker-in-chief, for sure. His talk of late has moved Paul Krugman to believe, at least.

In this big push to get health reform passed, will Obama finally discover his inner president? Instead of just invoking the likes of Lincoln and Roosevelt in his speeches, will he actually start acting like them?

I'm a PC. Do I matter anymore?

2010-03-09T09:44:00.006-06:00

Are you ready to ditch your desktop?

One of the chestnuts still heard within newspaper offices is "people don't like to sit at a computer to read the news."

And, of course, there's some truth to that. (A lot of them prefer to sit on the can and read! A fella once told me "Your paper is the perfect size. I can finish it in one crap." Which didn't say a lot for the roughage in his diet.)

As a newspaper editor, I'd get calls from our readers begging me not to shortchange the print product because they didn't want to go online to read. By and large, but not exclusively, this feedback came from folks in their 70s.

(I couldn't tell them the digital revolution had little to do with the diminution of their local paper. Mostly, that lost content never migrated to the web. It was quashed by execs looking to save a buck.)

Now, a European Google executive suggests that desktop PCs will be irrelevant within three years.

About a third of people get their news from a mobile device, a trend that's exploding as we speak.

Newspaper companies are about as far behind the curve on mobile news as they were for the web. (I'm still wondering, where are the local newspaper apps?) With that track record, who's going to bet they'll catch up?

The argument now, apparently, per this video, is that newsprint is superior to your Droid or iPhone. I'm not tethered to a digital device, yet, but I'm not buying this.

Where do you read your news?

2010-03-08T08:53:00.000-06:00

Six out of 10 Americans get news from both online and offline sources on a typical day, according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project study released last week.

33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones
28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them
37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter
61% say they get some kind of news online
50% say they read news in a local newspaper

Chicago Newsroom: Future of Journalism

2010-03-05T12:49:00.001-06:00

Hero has gone mobile

2010-03-05T09:00:00.002-06:00

You should be able to read this blog on your iPhone or Droid or other mobile time-wasting machine. Yes you, the one who reads this blog!! Thanks to the nifty Widgetbox. You can also point your mobile device here: http://m.wbx.me/amarketsquarehero.

You'll also find the Twitter feed and Market Square Video channel.

A publisher who 'gets it'? Can it be?

2010-03-04T23:19:00.003-06:00

A newspaper publisher who gets it? Can there really be one? Been a while since I've seen such a being up close and in the flesh. I've heard they exist. They're like mythic creatures. But Judy Sims insists she's even talked to one.

Last week, I had the pleasure of spending an hour on the phone with John Paton as he drove from Ohio to Michigan. John is the newly appointed president of the Journal Register Company and up until February of this year, he was Chair and CEO of the Spanish language newspaper company, impreMedia.

The fact that a kid from public housing grew to be a prominent newspaper publisher in both Canada and the US isn’t the most amazing thing about John. What's truly amazing is that he is a publisher who gets it. And in my opinion, that's extraordinarily rare.

John blogs and tweets. His eyes are wide open, he isn’t lying to himself about the state of the newspaper industry and he’s not afraid to make the tough decisions most other newspaper executives are avoiding. And though his papers are in some of the economically hardest hit regions of the US, if anyone is going to figure out how to keep newspapers alive in the 21st century, I’m betting it will be John.

She goes on to cite a speech Paton gave as a "blueprint for all publishers to follow."

An acknowledgement that media companies must work with the sea of change brought on by the digital world, not against it.

A web first, brand first strategy. A breaking news story will start as an SMS message, then go to the web and social media, be enhanced with video and audio and then be printed for the newspaper last.

Smart outsourcing of non-value creating activities such as pre-press, printing and distribution.

Investment in value creators such as editorial, marketing, reader research and technology. Investment in editorial does not mean editorial processes don’t have to change. John heeds Jeff Jarvis’s advice to “do what you do best and link to the rest”. That means not sending “10 reporters to the world cup”.

The beginnings of a newspaper-curated, hyper-local blogging network.

She even felt inspired after talking to him. Let's say Paton is someone to watch in 2010 and beyond.

Palin spoofs herself on Jay Leno

2010-03-03T17:39:00.001-06:00

Tell me Sarah Palin isn't angling for her own TV show. And to be honest, that's a perfect fit for her. Why run for office when you can be the right wing's Oprah?

Doyle and trouble for ChicagoNow

2010-03-02T10:05:00.002-06:00

I've always been intrigued by the idea of ChicagoNow, and initially praised its announcement as evidence of some bold thinking by traditional media. The concept still holds merit. But as ChicagoNow took shape, its shortcomings outweighed the site's better qualities. ChicagoNow makes you work to find interesting posts. And after poking around amongst the blogs for a while, it becomes clear that the quality of the content is uneven.

Writes Mike Doyle, on Chicago Carless:

Unfortunately, instead of relying on accepted standards, for ten months ChicagoNow’s online environment has felt more like Fisher Price Playskool for bloggers. That’s pretty insulting–not to mention limiting–for ChicagoNow bloggers who’ve come to rely on standard environments and tools from years of producing blogs for themselves and others. It’s an outright disservice to newbie bloggers who end up thrown into the shallow end of the pool, made to use clunky online tools and suffer through ineffective navigation that they might easily assume are somehow common.

Shortly after ChicagoNow's debut, as observations about the project pinballed back and forth among the reporters in the ChiTown Daily News newsroom, I weighed in with the view that this was a business-side coup. For decades, publishers have been finding ways to pay their newsrooms less and less. Here, they've figured out how to generate local content for almost nothing. The bloggers for ChicagoNow are in essence digital migrant farmworkers, paid mere pennies on the sentence while the traffic aggregates solely to the benefit of Tribune Company.

Given such a status for the bloggers, that their complaints and suggestions fell on the Trib's deaf ears and shrugged shoulders should come as no surprise.

On the flip side, ChicagoNow blogger Sarah Spain offers a thoughtful rebuttal to Doyle's firebombs in the comments on Windy Citizen.

'If it bleeds, we can kill it'

2010-02-22T19:34:00.000-06:00

If only Arnold could do to hypocrisy what he inflicted on the alien in "Predator."

While the Obama Administration may be guilty of overstating the impact of the stimulus, the Republicans can't pretend the stimulus hasn't saved some jobs and created others.

Take, for instance, federal education money. Much of it is being used to keep school budgets afloat instead of creating new programs to move student performance forward. If that money weren't flowing to schools, teacher layoffs would be far steeper and our children would fall further behind the global learning curve.

While we should see more private sector jobs being created, to pretend that the stimulus has been an utter failure is disingenuous.

Northern Exposure: Palin needs a show, too

2010-02-20T00:46:00.001-06:00

Sarah Palin is the Republican Party's version of Kate Gosselin ... or Kim Kardashian. Attractive women with a whacky families who are on TV constantly for reasons having nothing to do with smarts or ability. And the drama, oh they love the drama. Though of fleeting interest to most people, each garners outsized media coverage that can't be justified by her respective small-yet-committed tribe of inexplicably faithful fans.

iPad, Obama and the Pope

2010-02-17T17:00:00.002-06:00

Good question:

Between the announcement of Apple’s “truly magical and revolutionary product,” the first State of the Union address by President Barack Obama, and Pope Benedict XVI’s plea for priests to embrace the Internet to communicate with followers, I think it might be time to ask the question: Has blogging peaked? Think about it for a second, a hobby that was once reserved for an 18-year-old tech geek toiling away in his parent’s basement has become a medium – actually, a media – all to itself.

Replied one reader, bloggers risk being "buried beneath googles of tripe and meaningless vapor."

That's one fat monkey

2010-02-16T20:20:00.000-06:00

Too many Lil Debbies will do this to you.