Beyond Outrageous

[Note: This post has been updated (4) as of 1:24 AM Eastern on 30 Sep. See below.]

This is outrageous. No, beyond outrageous — way beyond.

Don Rosenberg, music critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer for 16 years, was told yesterday by the paper's editor that he will no longer be covering the famed Cleveland Orchestra. He has been given the option of reviewing other musical events in town, as well as dance. Another writer at the paper, Zack Lewis, was told he will now be orchestra's reviewer.

[...]

Don's musical background is as good as it gets, his evaluations reasoned and sensitive. He has covered the Cleveland Orchestra for nearly three decades (including a stint with another area paper), and he's the author of the definitive book about that orchestra. So what did he do wrong? He has questioned, more than once, the sanctity of the Cleveland Orchestra's music director, Franz Welser-Möst, who started in 2002 and has had his contract renewed a couple times, the last extension taking him all the way to 2018. Don has judged that Welser-Möst is lacking in certain abilities in certain repertoire, that he doesn't necessarily get the best out of music or the eminent ensemble.

[...]

[A]pparently, some Cleveland Orchestra boosters can't accept any negative words about the music director. I imagine they dismiss as irrelevant the fact that the orchestra, while on tour, has been known to generate reviews by other critics expressing reservations about Welser-Möst. Of course, there's nothing that can be done about out-of-town naysayers, but there's always good old-fashioned lobbying that can be tried at home. That, it seems, has now been successful. The Plain Dealer has clearly caved into pressure from a faction representing the orchestra and the man on its podium.

If all true, both the publisher and the editor of the Plain Dealer, "Ohio's largest newspaper", ought to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. That sort of craven, editorial kowtowing to influential interests ought to be absolute anathema to any news publication, large or small, with any pretense to quality, integrity, and authority.

Bloody pimps!

RTWT here.

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Update (1:56 AM Eastern on 24 Sep): We qualified our above closing comment by prefacing it with, "If all true...." Well, it now appears it's decidedly all true.

When the [Cleveland] orchestra announced in June that it had contracted the Austrian conductor [Welser-Möst] through the year 2018 — giving him 16 years on the Cleveland podium — The New York Times commented that the news might “surprise” some observers who feel that the conductor “has not lived up to his potential.”

Actually, the news surprised quite a few observers.... Rosenberg, too, was surprised, but he was told by his bosses that he could not express an opinion or write a column on the appointment; he could only report the facts.[!!]

Susan Goldberg, the newspaper’s editor since June of 2007, would not comment on her decision to reassign Rosenberg, calling it “an internal personnel move…we never talk about this kind of thing.” She also would neither confirm nor deny that she had been pressured by the orchestra to make the move; the newspaper’s current and immediate past publishers — Terrance E.Z. Egger and Alex Machaskee — both serve on the orchestra’s board of directors.

RTW squalid T here.

Update 2 (5:17 PM Eastern on 24 Sep): This gets more outrageous, seemingly with each passing day.

Rosenberg says the editor [Susan Goldberg, editor of Cleveland's The Plain Dealer since June of 2007] told him the "credibility of the paper is being compromised by [your] views," that he was being "unfair" to the orchestra, that he was "attacking them," and that it was an "untenable situation for the newspaper."

RTWT here.

Update 3 (1:44 PM Eastern on 25 Sep): Here's more on the matter, but nothing really new.

Update 4 (1:24 AM Eastern on 30 Sep): For a defense of this action by the ombudsman for The Plain Dealer and our response to same, see this post.