Yoo-hoo, We're Still Standing

In January 1979, I started a three-month journalism internship in Washington, D.C. — exactly one month after Cleveland became the first city since the end of the Great Depression to declare default.

For 12 straight weeks, I was on the receiving end of an endless loop of bad jokes about Cleveland. The Dreary Erie, they called us. The Mistake on the Lake. The Biggest Hole Above Ground.

"Hey, what's the difference between Cleveland and the Titanic?" pink-cheeked Ivy Leaguers would shout.

"Cleveland has a better orchestra," I'd answer with a groan.

"Heard that one, have ya?"

Oh, ho-ho. What fun.

To them, Cleveland was a town of losers in double-knit leisure suits with white vinyl shoes and matching belts. We were down for the count, never to bounce back.

It's 2009, and I still am waiting for their apology.

That summer of '79, I interned back in Cleveland, right here at The Plain Dealer. Editors were so impressed with me that they took 14 years to hire me back. By the time they did, I was a 36-year-old soon-to-be-single mother with exactly zero experience at a daily newspaper.

Some warned me that The Plain Dealer never would hire a freelancer. Then they warned me it would take just this side of forever to write features, which I got to do for eight years. Then I became a columnist, which they also warned me never would happen.

I share this so that you'll understand why I never have put much stock in the opinions of people who don't know what they're talking about, particularly when it comes to my town or my newspaper. I'm a creature of habit, and my habit is to believe in Cleveland and in this newspaper.

Recently, a nasty rumor of our imminent demise was launched by a fellow I won't name because he already has been discredited. The last thing I want to do is give more attention to someone who didn't do his job.

Mr. Lazy Pants, who is co-proprietor of a Web site called?"24/7 Wall St.," declared that The Plain Dealer was one of 10?newspapers most likely to fold or go digital.

Before you knew it, a whole bunch of us — including our publisher, our editor and our reader representative — were fielding calls and assuring alarmed readers that we weren't going anywhere.

I can't predict the future, for me or my profession, but here's what I do know: Hundreds of thousands of readers in the Cleveland area still love The Plain Dealer, and we love them right back. This is true of newspapers and their communities across the country, including smack-dab in the middle of America.

We Midwesterners have a lot in common: We're scrappy and we're real. Most of us think it's not so much sophisticated as just kind of silly to wear black year-round and interrupt your own monologue by fluttering your fingers and asking, "Oh, but how to say it in English?"

Here in Cleveland, we're used to exceeding the low expectations of people who don't understand us. We've done it before, and we'll do it again. If they knew us, they'd know that.

I'm reminded of the final scene in Dennis McFarland's rich novel "Letter from Point Clear." One of the main characters, Morris, is studying an atlas with his 13-year-old nephew, Willie.

The book is opened to a two-page map of the United States, and Morris points to their location on Cape Cod. "Here we are," he says.

His finger moves down to Alabama, where his sister lives, and then to North Carolina, the home of one of Willie's friends. From there, Morris' finger glides across the page to California, where their handyman's grandson lives.

Finally, Morris draws circles throughout the Midwest.

"And here's a whole bunch of people we never met," he says.

"But might meet someday," Willie says.

"But might meet someday," repeats Morris.

Imagine never knowing the people of Cleveland.

Can't bear the thought.

No, sir. Can't bear it.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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