52 REPORTING THE ARTS II

s Drew Carey says, Cleveland rocks. Butthe home of the Rock and Roll Hall ofFame and Museum also lays claim to the world-renowned Cleveland

Orchestra, a distinct source of civic pride in thisstruggling rust-belt city.

One reason for the orchestra’s strong ties tothe community is its roster of educational pro-grams, which began with its founding in 1918and continues today. More than 70,000 youngpeople and adults annually attend concerts atSeverance Hall, the orchestra’s home, and morethan 100,000 Clevelanders flock each year tofree Fourth of July concerts and other events.

Despite its importance, the ClevelandOrchestra has experienced financial hard timesin the past five years. At the end of 2002 it was$1.3 million in the hole. So even though its envi-able endowment should ensure that it will bearound for some time to come, the orchestra stillset out to cut costs. It suspended its nationalradio broadcasts, delayed repairs to SeveranceHall and instituted a salary freeze for someemployees and voluntary pay cuts for senioradministrators. Still, the next year it posted aneven bigger deficit: $1.9 million on a $36.1 mil-lion budget.

The city’s other key treasure, the heavilyendowed Cleveland Museum of Art, has faced asimilar plight. In July 2003 it was forced to layoff employees, freeze salaries and cut pay by 5percent for senior management in order to trimits $33.3 million budget by $3.3 million.

And these prestige institutions are the luckyones. In the past five years, companies that havegone out of business include the ClevelandBallet, once hailed as among the nation’s topclassical dance companies; the Ohio ChamberOrchestra, which served as the ballet’s pit orches-tra; and the Cleveland Signstage Theatre, a the-ater company for the deaf. For a city with suchpremier cultural facilities, the vexing problem ishow to make sure other institutions don’t alsoclose their doors.

At the Cleveland Play House, the nation’soldest continuously operating nonprofit theatercompany, executive director Dean Gladdenpointed—literally—to one of the reasons for theCleveland arts scene’s woes. “B.P. America, gone.TRW, sold last year,” he says, reading names froma plaque installed in 1983 that honors corporatedonors. “White Consolidated Industries, gone.LTV Steel Company, bankrupt. Gone.”

In the 1990s, no fewer than 11 corporations

Cleveland, Ohio

A“It’s not just

arts for arts’

sake anymore.”Kathleen Cerveny

senior program officer

The Cleveland

Foundation.

Pho

togr

aph

cour

tesy

of t

he C

onve

nti

on a

nd

Vis

itor

s B

urea

u of

Cle

vela

nd.

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 53

Cleveland is one of the few cities its size with lit-tle public funding for culture. The city spendsless than $100,000 on the arts—despite a studyreleased in 2000 that showed the arts and cul-tural industry generates more than $1 billion ineconomic activity and employs 3,700 full-timeworkers in the region. In fact, in order to fundthe Cleveland Browns Stadium, the city enacteda parking tax that didn’t exempt nonprofitgroups; a percentage of their parking fees there-fore goes to subsidize one of the richest prosports teams in the country. And the city’s major

moved their headquarters out of Cleveland.OfficeMax recently joined the exodus, leavingCleveland alone among the top 20 largest U.S.cities to show a net loss of large corporate head-quarters. “The single biggest area of concern isthat Cleveland’s corporate population has beendeclining and continues to decline,” says GaryHanson, the orchestra’s executive director.“Consequently, corporate support for the arts hasbeen declining.”

And when the corporations moved or shutdown, plenty of management-level and otherjobs went with them. Census figures show thatthe region lost 1.3 percent of its population dur-ing the 1990s, while the U.S. population as awhole grew by more than 13 percent. What’smore, young people moved out of the area at arate more than twice the national average,including nearly 20 percent of those 25 to 34years of age. “We try new things every year, andour subscription base is still diminishing,” saysGladden, who has seen Play House subscribersdwindle from 14,000 in 1983 to 7,000 this sea-son. “Instead of saying they don’t have time,they’re saying, ‘We’re worried about our jobs.’Or they don’t have a job, and they’re trying tosave money.”

Another demographic shift that has hurtinstitutions like the Play House is movementfrom inner-ring suburbs like Cleveland Heightsand Shaker Heights to communities fartheroutside the city such as Solon, Hudson andBainbridge. For those residents, a trip to andfrom Cleveland for a night’s entertainment isnow more complicated and time-consuming.

Meanwhile, the city’s cultural communityhas faced problems common to arts groupsnationwide. Post-September 11, ticket salesdropped, and the falling stock market caused adecrease in foundation support and private giv-ing. For example, the Cleveland Foundation’sarts grants totaled $8.6 million in both 1999and 2002 but dipped to $7.1 million in 2003.At the same time, the Cleveland-based GeorgeGund Foundation reduced its grants overall by$1 million, falling to $19 million in 2002 and$18 million the following year. “I think it can bestabilized, but I think we’ll lose more organiza-tions,” says Marcie Goodman, executive directorof the Cleveland Film Society, which was pulledback from the brink of bankruptcy in 2003. “Idon’t see population increasing. I think it’smore a matter of just stabilizing and building amore devoted audience, and reaching out tonew audiences.”

Making matters worse is the fact thatThe Plain Dealer

investment in the popular arts—the Rock andRoll Hall of Fame, designed by I.M. Pei andopened in 1995—draws mainly tourists and hasnot proven itself to be an incubator for arts-relat-ed businesses.

The last five years have been bleak, but thosewho toil in the nonprofit arts world are nothingif not optimistic. Some might even argue thathard times have given rise to positive develop-ments, such as the formation of the CommunityPartnership for the Arts and Culture (C-PAC),which has become an arts-advocacy coalitionand a clearinghouse for information.

In the meantime, help has gone out to sometroubled groups in the form of the ClevelandFoundation’s Advancement Program for Mid-Sized Arts Organizations. Announced in May2004, the three-year, $5 million initiative isdesigned to assist groups across a range of disci-plines—Apollo’s Fire: The Cleveland BaroqueOrchestra, Cleveland Film Society, ClevelandPublic Art, Great Lakes Theater Festival,Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland andYoung Audiences of Greater Cleveland—instrengthening their balance sheets and develop-ing a core of skilled leaders.

Furthermore, new troupes have arisen fromthe demise of old ones. Among the most innova-

tive and artistically well-regarded are Red, anorchestra formed in 2001 by former members of the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, andGroundWorks, a dance company founded in1998 by former Cleveland Ballet dancer DavidShimotakahara. Other new ventures are helpingto revitalize the scene as well. A group calledSparx in the City, for example, has organizedsuch events as a tour of 50 art galleries, designedboth to highlight the arts and stimulate mer-chant activity in downtown Cleveland.

Perhaps the biggest change to come out ofthe troubled times is a new mindset about therole of culture in general. “It’s not just arts forarts’ sake anymore,” says Kathleen Cerveny, sen-ior program officer of the Cleveland Foundation.“The arts have to make the case that they con-tribute to economic and community develop-ment, not just to the quality of life and perpetu-ating old elitist values.”

Cerveny, for one, sees hope even in the March2004 defeat of Issue 31, a property-tax initiativethat would have raised nearly $21 million to helpthe local economy and cultural activity. “Eventhough it failed, the arts community was enor-mously energized,” she says. “There was recogni-tion overnight that the arts were a sector to becontended with.”

By Valerie Takahama

54 REPORTING THE ARTS II

“I don’t see

population

increasing. I

think it’s more

a matter of just

stabilizing and

building a more

devoted

audience, and

reaching out to

new audiences.” Marcie Goodman

executive director

Cleveland Film Society

and Sunday Arts. On the weekends The Plain Dealer was one offour metropolitan newspapers in our study to increase both the arti-cles and listings newshole in its arts sections. Nonetheless, theincrease was from unusually low to slightly below average.

Over the last five years, The Plain Dealer has transformed itsmovie coverage by introducing voluminous listings, which now takeup more space than journalism. Music has also shifted toward list-ings, but less drastically. The cutback in the number of articles wasnot applied across the board. The paper continues to be a leader incovering classical music. Theater and book reviews also survived rel-atively unscathed. Dance and painting, however, were hard-hit. Italso virtually eliminated coverage of the decorative arts, a beat inwhich five years ago The Plain Dealer was a leader, making it one ofthe specialties of its now-defunct non-arts feature section.—AT

While Editor & Publisher magazine gave Cleveland’s Plain Dealeraccolades for its improvements, the paper’s newshole for arts-and-cul-ture articles has nonetheless been devastated during the past fiveyears. The monthly story count plummeted from more than 650 arti-cles to fewer than 450, causing the paper to go from being a leader inthe arts coverage in October 1998 to merely average in 2003.

These huge cuts were the result of a revamping of The PlainDealer’s daily arts journalism. Back in October 1998, its specialist artssection, entitled Entertainment, had a companion daily features sec-tion called Lifestyle. They have been merged into Arts & Life; the vol-ume of daily arts journalism has been halved; and the new section hasshifted its emphasis towards listings.

The Plain Dealer has also consolidated much of its weekly artsfeatures into its previously undersized weekend supplements Friday!

56 REPORTING THE ARTS II

Now, in addition to the daily section, the mainvenues for arts and entertainment stories are the90-page tabloid-size Friday! weekend magazineand the 14-page Sunday Arts section. While over-all space for arts coverage has decreased, and thenumber of arts articles has plummeted from 669in October 1998 to 433 in October 2003, ThePlain Dealer has not reduced its arts staff corre-spondingly. And in terms of content, the papercontinues to devote considerable resources toseries and special projects such as:

• “Quiet Crisis,” a group of news stories, edi-torials and panel discussions that looked atthe region’s problems and the need to createa development plan “or face economicextinction.” It included a 4,600-word, A1story by staffer Carolyn Jack that focused onthe arts’ ability to boost the economy andcompared Cleveland’s lackluster support forthe arts and stodgy image to arts-friendlySeattle and its hip mystique.

• Coverage of the Cleveland InternationalPiano Competition, an August 2003 eventthat generated more than two dozenreviews, features and news stories includinga look at the economic impact of the VanCliburn piano competition in the FortWorth area. “It’s something that deservescoverage,” says Clifton. “We recognize that itisn’t for everybody, but sports isn’t foreverybody, either.”

• A five-part series on “The Forgotten Valley”by architecture and visual-arts critic StevenLitt. Published in November 2000, itfocused on the Ohio & Erie Canal NationalHeritage Corridor, a new kind of nationalpark that celebrates “commonplace land-scapes and historical sites” and is meant tospark preservation and renewal.

• An architecture competition initiated byThe Plain Dealer in November 2003 todevise design plans for Whiskey Island, anarea that includes the Cleveland BrownsStadium, City Hall and several docks.Organizers had anticipated a few submis-sions but instead received 38 proposals,which were unveiled in front of a standing-room-only crowd of about 300 people.

At the same time, the paper has continuedits comprehensive coverage of the local arts

Arts Coverage in Cleveland: A Critical View

As Cleveland’s arts institutions struggle tomaintain audiences and funding, cultural leadershope for more from the media than calendar list-ings and thumbs-up reviews. “It’s more than‘What did you think of the Hamlet that openedlast night?’ It’s the meaning of Hamlet being pro-duced in the community,” says Charles Fee, pro-ducing artistic director of the Great LakesTheater Festival. “Unless the arts are seen as cen-tral to the ongoing discussion about the health ofthe community, you can forget about being at thetable for any decisions about the community.”

As one of the oldest, largest and most influ-ential institutions in that community, The PlainDealer appropriately has taken a leading role instimulating discussion about Cleveland’s need toreinvent itself from a manufacturing hub to acenter for medical research and the biotechindustry. At the same time, the paper continuesto reveal the important role of the arts in thattransformation.

It’s fitting, too, because the paper, which isowned by Advance Publications, has experienceda renaissance of sorts under the leadership ofDouglas Clifton, who took over as editor in June1999 and was named Editor of the Year in 2003by Editor & Publisher magazine. “Readers andreporters alike credit Clifton for quickly trans-forming The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspa-per by far, from a middling metro that wasn’teven considered the best paper in the state to onethat now appears as if it belongs among thenation’s 25 biggest dailies,” the magazine report-ed, citing improvements such as better graphics,a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writingand a change in image and attitude.

Readers seem to like what they see. DespiteCleveland’s depressed economy, the paper hasscored marginal but consistent circulation gainsin the last three years. In late 2000, circulationwas 359,978 daily and 477,515 Sundays. By thesame time in 2003, circulation had risen to367,528 daily and 480,540 Sundays.

Arts and entertainment coverage has tradi-tionally been strong at The Plain Dealer, as notedin the 1999 Reporting the Arts study. At thattime, the paper had recently introduced a 6- to12-page daily stand-alone called Entertainment,which has since merged with the feature sectionto create Arts & Life.

“Touring is a

whole different

world, and that

broad kind of

coverage makes

touring make

sense to our

audiences.”Nikki Scandalios

spokewoman

Cleveland Orchestra

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 57

scene as well as its policy of sending writers outof town for major events like the South bySouthwest music festival and to New York andLos Angeles to stay up-to-date with their beats.The Cleveland Orchestra’s concerts in Viennalast fall, for example, marked Plain Dealer clas-sical music critic Donald Rosenberg’s 12th tourwith the ensemble. Other Cleveland-area newsorganizations sending journalists on the tourincluded WCLV 104.9, a commercial classicalmusic station based in Lorain; WKSU 89.7, apublic classical music station in Kent; andWVIZ/PBS and WCPN 90.3 Ideastream, a pub-lic-media partnership based in Cleveland.

So what does all the attention mean to theorchestra? “They provided a lot of context forthe readers and listeners in Cleveland to under-stand why it is so important to perform on theworld’s stages,” says orchestra spokeswomanNikki Scandalios. “In addition to print stories,there were radio stories, interviews, lots of infor-mation on their Web sites, tons of photos, blogs.Touring is a whole different world, and thatbroad kind of coverage makes touring makesense to our audiences. It adds a whole new levelof value to our audience in Cleveland.”

Other media outlets covering the culturalscene include the Akron Beacon Journal, whichhas a circulation of 139,200 daily and 187,456Sunday and covers major events in Cleveland.And a couple of other players on the Clevelandmedia scene recently made news themselves. InJanuary 2003, New Times Media, which pub-lishes the Cleveland newsweekly Scene, andVillage Voice Media, publisher of the rivalCleveland Free Times, reached an agreement thatended a Justice Department antitrust investiga-tion. The deal that triggered the inquiry was con-

cocted in October 2002, when New Times Mediapaid $2 million to Village Voice Media to closethe Free Times. New Times Media then agreed tostop publishing New Times Los Angeles inexchange for $11 million from Village VoiceMedia, which owns a rival Los Angeles alterna-tive weekly. While there was no admission ofguilt by either chain, each company was requiredto pay fines and fees of about $375,000 and tosell the papers so they could be reopened in eachcity. Subsequently the Free Times reappeared inMay 2003 with a 112-page issue and a circula-tion of 70,000, about 20,000 fewer copies thanbefore it was shut down.

The Internet boasts a lively new upstart inCoolCleveland.com, a weekly e-newsletter start-ed in late 2002. Delivered to subscribers’ inboxeson Wednesday mornings, it lists the week’s arts,entertainment and community events along withinterviews of cultural leaders, politicians and lib-eral activists. It now claims tens of thousands ofsubscribers and has expanded its bailiwick tohost art, tech and dance parties drawing 450people at a time to venues throughout downtownCleveland. So now, instead of locals bemoaning,“There’s nothing to do in this town,” Clevelandershave more ways to connect with the arts thanthey did even a few years ago.

All in all, city residents are probably as wellserved by the media today as they were five yearsago. “I think the arts coverage in Cleveland isvery good,” says Charles Fee, who came to GreatLakes Theater Festival from Idaho in 2002.“They’re reporting on and talking about the artson a regular basis in all the print media. It’s thefirst time in my life when I’ve felt like media cov-erage has played a major role in selling the ideathat it’s worth saving a company.”

By Valerie Takahama