Ah, how we miss you.

Still.

The Cleveland Press, circa 1982.

The Press often had better street creds than The Plain Dealer did.  It was more the working stiff’s paper, open a bit more to dissenting views.

This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the death – or murder – of the Cleveland Press.  It left the Plain Dealer a newspaper monopoly.  It deprived the PD (and its readers) of healthy competition.

Point of View newsletter revealed the first real evidence the Cleveland Press’ death six months before the afternoon newspaper folded.

In the early 1980s, I would spend many Friday afternoons – when news sources had escaped for the weekend – at the Cuyahoga County Recorder’s offices.

I would search the recent filings of legal documents, typically new business partnerships, formed for this or that venture.  It usually proved rewarding, as it did in the case of the Press.

I found evidence of troublesome Cleveland business and political relationships.  I think Milt Widder and Bill Dvorak, who wrote interesting gossip columns at the Press, must have had a source at the Recorder’s office.  It seems a good bet that they got tips from someone there for rare gossip column items.

These searches led to a number of juicy political items.  One revealed George Forbes in business with landfill mogul Pete Boyas and another, Jim Carney, a Cleveland Democratic Party boss and city power broker, a partner with Forbes. A number of connections showed up in business and political figures in partnership to vie for the city’s cable franchise.

These rarely examined legal filings tipped the business associations of other political and business movers and shakers.

Sometime at the end of December 1981, I came across evidence filed for a land deal.  It foretold the end of the Press.

The deed had been filed quietly at the Recorder’s office.

Though it involved a newspaper, there was no mention of the real estate transfer in either newspaper – Press or Plain Dealer.

“When any 103-year old institution disappears, it’s heartbreaking.  When a daily, living connection to everyday people dies, it’s tragic,” I’ve written of the newspaper’s death.

The legal papers filed that December acknowledged the transfer of the land upon which the Cleveland Press stood to a private partnership headed by Press owner Joe Cole.  He had purchased the Press from Scripps-Howard.  The Cleveland paper had been the flagship of the famed newspaper chain.

I wrote about the land deal in the Jan. 30, 1982 issue of Point of View.  It started:

“Cleveland Press owner-publisher Joseph Cole has said that the reason he wanted to save the city’s second newspaper was that he wanted to repay the people of Cleveland for his success as a millionaire businessman here.

“The more cynical among us said that Cole wanted a valuable piece of property in downtown Cleveland to make more money.

“In fact, Cole recently announced that he wanted to develop land adjacent to the Press newspaper building as an office-hotel complex.  A $128-million project was announced with fanfare.

“Those interested in preserving at least a two-newspaper city reasoned that the dying Press could possibly be revived with income from an office building, a subsidy to the lack of income from the paper.

“But a series of real estate changes in the Press property in December suggests that the more cynical might have been right.

“That the reasoning that Cole has less interest in paying back the city and citizens of Cleveland and preserving a second newspaper and more interest in fattening his wallet, might be correct.

“Cole has had the real estate property – land and building – of the Press Publishing Company, which he heads, transferred to a limited partnership in which he holds controlling interest.

“The changes in the ownership of the Press real estate holdings suggest that the profits from any real estate development would not go toward subsidizing a losing newspaper but to a limited partnership controlled and benefiting Cole.

“The Press Publishing Co., owned by Cole, sold the property and building at the corner of East 9th Street and Lakeside Avenue to Lakeside Associates.

“Lakeside Associates, formed the same day as the property transfer, has two limited partners named:  Joe Cole and James P. Malone, Jr.

“Documents filed with Cuyahoga County say that Cole owns two-thirds and Maloney one-third.

“The Partnership, according to the filing, was organized 'to acquire certain real estate property and improvements situated at E. 9th Street and Lakeside and to own, lease,  rent, mortgage, improve, repair, sell, convey and otherwise deal with such real property and improvements.'”

It was the death knell of the Press.

I ran across the information by chance.

Today, two office structures sit on the formidable foundation where the newspaper presses once stood.  (More about the Death of the Press in future columns.)

I ended the January 1982 article...  “The outlook for the Press isn’t bright and the real estate deal suggests that Cole got the main asset out of the newspaper’s ownership – a warning and a message of his real concern.”