Press closed in '82 but stories and photos live on

CLEVELAND - When the last edition of the Cleveland Press rolled off the presses on June 17, 1982 at East Ninth and Lakeside, it left Cleveland as a one-newspaper town.

Joseph Cole purchased the paper from our parent company Scripps a couple of years earlier and tried to make a go of it adding color and a Sunday edition to the afternoon daily.

Cole said that on the ongoing financial challenges during a downturn in the economy were just too much and although he hated to do it, it was time to close the paper.

The loss to Cleveland may never be truly measured but the loss of the Press would turn into an extremely valuable resource for Cleveland State University.

In 1984, Cole who was at that time a Cleveland State University trustee, donated the archives – or the ‘morgue’ as it’s known in the newspaper business.

The morgue contained 500,000 pictures and a million and a half newspaper clippings.

Lynn Bycko is a lifelong Clevelander and has worked as an associate in the Cleveland State University library’s Special Collection since 1990, she finds everyday to be a history lesson.

“I am a graduate of Cleveland State and I thought I knew history and then when I started working here in the Special Collections Department I started really learning about local history,” said Bycko.

Topics in the news are a draw for students to research, but there are some Cleveland subjects that are always popular.

Bycko said, “We get a regular turnout for topics such as Sam Sheppard and the Cuyahoga River fires.” Yes, there were multiple fires on the Cuyahoga.

The collection is on the third floor of the library located in Rhodes Tower and is open to the public. Researchers come from around the world as well as visitors looking for family research because a relative may have been in the paper.

But the staff of Special Collections, which includes Bill Barrow Special Collections Librarian and Bill Becker the University Archivist, is particularly proud of their online entry into the archive.

The Cleveland Memory Project is an online collection of memorabilia, including postcards and newspaper photos. Currently there are some 50,000 images available for browsing on the website www.clevelandmemory.org.

The project began with a collection of photos from the Cleveland Union Terminal that were donated and put online and has grown as images are continually added.

A special section on the 75th anniversary of the Great Lakes Exposition held in Cleveland has just been added.

Bycko thinks CSU's cataloged collection is an excellent resource because of the way it was kept. Searchable by topic or name, it’s very easy to use. Also the fact it was an active chronicle as Cleveland changed was immensely valuable.

“Memories fade, people pass away and those memories that everybody use suddenly become very obscure and forgotten about so the process of trying to collect history while history is happening or after it has just recently happened is very important,” she said.

Items in the collection are original black and white photos, actual newspaper clippings, microfilm and few large nostalgic items. A Cleveland Press newspaper box, 20 cents daily or 25 cents for the Sunday edition, a delivery bag and some framed front pages were just put on display.

As a web extra, I’ve added some of our WEWS coverage from the closing of the Press.

You’ll see the final run of the presses, some shots of the newsroom, an Alan DePetro story of the closing and a Paul Orlousky story on the history of the Press.