Erieview News

Erieview News at 1930 East 6th Street had been closed for over 20 years, but the sign from the 1970's renovation remains. Photo from last October.

This was a regular stop back in the 70's and 80's, newspapers from all over the world would be for sale in here. Some regional papers, like the Detroit Free-Press, Buffalo Courier-Express, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, would be here the day they were published, sometimes within hours, others would be a few days old, like the Los Angeles Times, or the London papers. You could also read these papers for free at the Public Library, just around the corner from here, they had a huge newspaper reading room. For me it was better to get a few, and take them back to the theatres, or home, where hot coffee made a nice addition to the paper. I used to read a lot of newspapers, usually three or four a day, sometimes more. Cleveland was down to two papers then, The Press and the Plain Dealer. I delivered the Press for a couple years when I was a kid. The Press folded in 1982, leaving Cleveland a one paper town, although the Akron Beacon-Journal expanded their reach into the Cleveland area, it wasn't the same. The BJ was a good paper then, haven't read one in decades, it's still published. Back then the papers seemed way better then what passes for news anymore. Lately newspapers have become little more than stenographers for the elite, and the television news is lots worse. News reporting has become very sloppy, and often downright deceptive, and slanted heavily towards the left. A good local example was when Fast Eddie Rendell was governor, the local newspapers and television stations all pushed his agenda, even going as far as allowing him to lie about "Tax cuts for all Pennsylvania property owners." It was a lie, and they all knew it, but he was the guy they were pushing. I remember sitting in that Barnes & Nobel on Main Street in Wilkes-Barre in the fall of 2006. Behind me was one of the WBRE news readers whose been long gone from here, she was telling some other people " we all love the governor, and we're doing everything to make sure he gets re-elected."  One of them even used a racial slur referring to Lynn Swan who was running against Rendell, great people. I just laugh when they have that tip line thing, around here it would be suicide to call that number, I have no doubt that whomever you were reporting about would learn of your call in minutes. Meanwhile the local paper has become little more than a bunch of puff pieces and poorly written news stories, sometimes vague as to what and where an event happened, television is worse in this regard. We ended up cancelling our newspaper, hard to do, but it was becoming way too expensive, and it didn't seem worth the hassle anymore. Plus it was hard to get rid of the papers, eight to ten times a year they wouldn't get picked up from the curb, and they'd be there for two weeks until the next paper pick up, sometimes four to six weeks. However, I really miss reading a good newspaper.