1

Joe Eszterhas GOD SAVE THE NEWSPAPER PEOPLE!

In 1971, I was fired by The Plain Dealer for writing a critical, snarky (and possibly sophomoric) article in a national magazine about the newspapers editor and publisher, Tom Vail. Now, nearly 50 years later, I am asking you to participate in a campaign to save The Plain Dealer. Because the truth is that for much of my life I have begun my morning with a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and The Plain Dealer. I cant smoke or drink coffee anymore. Only The Plain Dealer is left. When I was a boy, an immigrant kid growing up on Lorain Avenue, I read The Plain Dealer avidly to keep track of my boyhood heroes: Lou Teller, Hungarian bank robber; Shondor Birns, Hungarian racketeer; Papa Joe Cremati, who sold so-called call girls. I didnt even know what those two words meant, but they certainly got my attention! My beloved Hungarian mother would cut those Plain Dealer articles I read into strips and tie them to our Christmas tree, bought at bargain basement prices at the Gerzeny and Sons Movers on 39th and Lorain. Imagine that! The Plain Dealer was part of the Christmas arrival of Baby Jesus and the holy angels each year. And when I was in high school, a glorious woman at The Plain Dealer named Jane Scott picked me as the winner of an essay contest -- my first writing published in the English language. (To my critics: It was all -- ALL! -- Janes fault.)

When I was 23 years old I was hired as a Plain Dealer reporter, thanks to the recommendations of a Hungarian priest and a Hungarian judge. Behind me in the city room sat a wizened reporter in his seventies named J.C. Daschbach, who kept calling me, for obvious aesthetic reasons, Eszters belly. Across from me sat an Irish terrorist of a reporter named Terry Sheridan, who did his best to seduce any executives secretary so that he could have access to all the internal memoranda the execs wrote. Scattered about the city room sat: steely-eyed Doris ODonnell, the best investigative reporter Id ever meet; Mike Roberts, the star feature writer of the staff; and Gerri Javor, my fellow Hungarian, who became my first wife. My favorite person in the city room was Johnny Rees, the gravel-voiced assistant city editor, who taught me everything I needed to know about journalism, drinking, hemorrhoids, and women. Oh, Lord, the many adventures I had! I spent an afternoon with Martin Luther King. And I took Jimi Hendrix to lunch at the Balaton Restaurant, then on Buckeye Road. Imagine that! Jimi Hendrix and I, stoned, gobbling down several orders of chicken paprikash. And I was the last person in the world to interview the great Otis Redding (at Leos Casino) before he got on his private plane the next day and died. I covered innumerable hold-ups and shootings, becoming expert at the morally dubious art of speaking to grieving relatives and convincing them to give me a photograph of their dead loved ones. Real reporters, I was told, were real men, He Men, who had the balls to observe an autopsy while eating a cheeseburger. But,

alas...thank you, God... I wasnt enough of a He Man; I didnt have the balls (or whatever else it took) to be able to do that. I loved The Plain Dealer and I truly loved many of the people there. I was decimated when I was fired. But, you know, it was a crazy time. I mean, it was the craziest time! It was such an unbelievably crazy time that some of us in The Plain Dealer city room, Time Magazine wrote, were suspected by management of trying to put LSD into the water coolers. It was bullshit; none of us in the city room had ever done any acid yet -- this was Cleveland, for Gods sake! (It took my future friend Hunter Thompson to introduce me to those kinds of chemical wonders.) So, decimated, I went to California and wrote other things for other publications and companies. But every month or so, Id sneak down to the public library without telling anyone and read The Plain Dealer. I just had to know which of my rock heroes Jane Scott was interviewing, and what Chuck Heaton and Hal Lebovitz were writing about the Browns and the Indians. And I just had to see whether that grand old fart J.C. Daschbach was still getting bylines. Then, 30 years after I went to California, I came back to Cleveland with a gaggle of young sons and a new wife and I greeted the day once again by reading The Plain Dealer. And I felt at home once again. Michael Heaton, Chucks kid, was always funny and often moving . . . Andrea Simakis had the chutzpah (balls?) to declare herself the Diva of Cleveland, and lived up to the title with her prose . . .Terry Pluto wrote about two of things I love the most in life: God and the Indians. Regina Brett somehow always

found stories that touched my heart . . . and Connie Schultz, now absent, enthralled me with stories of her family, especially her father. I was deeply saddened by the news that The Powers That Be are probably going to limit The Plain Dealers appearance to three times a week. Truth to tell, Im not sure how Im going to cope with that. (Im a complete Luddite and I dont even have a cell phone.) I dont think that reading The New York Times instead will really brighten my sadness. So . . . its up to you who are reading this to help me. Back in the day, Id probably grab a picket sign and some friends and go down to 18th and Superior and scream some simplistic and probably cliched anti-capitalist profanities. But my friends and I are more than a few years older now, and my voice these days gets lost in the wind a lot. So its up to you to raise some benevolent, dignified hell (What? Benevolent and dignified hell? What the hell is that?) and email The Powers That Be . . . specifically Steve Newhouse at stevejj@aol.com. Tell that capitalist dude that he will be saddening a lot of people if he does what we expect hell do. Tell him that there are a lot of people . . . newspaper men and women, not journalists, not analysts, not commentators, newspaper people . . . who have put their hearts and souls -- for not a lot of money -- into informing and entertaining readers whose daily lives are bettered by their commitment and intelligence. And, OK, if all of that benevolent, dignified stuff doesnt work -- then I say lets go out and find the picket signs and see if we have enough voice left to tell the sonsofbitches what we really think.

One other thing. Since I have become a born-again Catholic I have finally forgiven Tom Vail for firing me in 1971. I even grant the possibility that he was right to do it. To be fair to the man, he taught me a lesson about life that I never heard from anyone else. At lunch one day, cigar in hand, Tom Vail told me that the best way to smoke a good cigar is to dip its suck-end into some very fine five-star cognac before you fire it up. Such a really great life lesson, now that I cant smoke.

-- 30 --