Two Ohio towns. Identical story. That's what the AFP presented to us on Sunday and then again yesterday. On Sunday, we read this:
The streets are empty. Trash rustles down the road past rusted barbecues, abandoned furniture, sagging homes and gardens turned to weed.
This is Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland and a town ravaged by the subprime mortgage crisis roiling the United States.
Faded "for sale" signs sit in front of deserted houses. The residents are gone, either in search of new jobs after the factories shut down, or in shame after being evicted for missing their mortgage payments.
A red, white and blue American flag flies over windows and doors which have been boarded up to keep the drug dealers away.
Monday, we read this:
The streets are empty. Trash rustles down the road past rusted barbecues, abandoned furniture, sagging homes and gardens turned to weed.
This is Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood in southeastern Cleveland ravaged by the subprime mortgage crisis roiling the United States.
Faded "for sale" signs sit in front of deserted houses. The residents are gone, most after being evicted for missing their mortgage payments.
A red, white and blue American flag flies over windows and doors which have been boarded up to keep the drug dealers away.
Keep comparing the two. The wording is verbatim in both yarns.
Now, I don't know much about Ohio, but the merest bit of online checking shows that Shaker Heights and Mount Pleasant aren't even in the same county.
Just a [very] lazy day at the AFP?
UPDATE: I was hasty in my geographical assessment above. My initial Googling showed that Mount Pleasant is not only a separate town elsewhere in Ohio (which is why I wrote what I did at first), but further delving showed it is indeed the name of a "neighborhood" within the Cleveland city limits. Shaker Heights is a suburb of Cleveland. As such, the two entities should be fairly close to one another. However, this doesn't change the gist of this post indicating laziness (among other things) at the AFP.
—D. S. Hube is an educator and a member of the National Association of Scholars. He blogs regularly at The Colossus of Rhodey.
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
Ohio I know about
January 29, 2008 - 17:27 ET by Lame CherryOhio is a state with allot of idiot liberals and as you can tell by that crook governor who just got tossed out and Vionovich the GOP is about as stupid as a post.
Some of the people I most are about are in Ohio, but the state is a real estate billion dollar relfection of New York without the income.
Old houses there run around 100,000 built about 1910.........the houses which are up for sale usually are ones let go by defaulting on the loan for a cheaper rate.
Ohio is becoming in many ways olde England in too high of prices, too high of taxes and too many rats jammed into the countryside.
I love the people, but the story is bogus about the situation there.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
WOW
January 29, 2008 - 17:35 ET by kgWell....at least they changed the names.
They do that when talking about conservatives too. 'Form' articles or templates where you just fill in the name.
Media Template
January 29, 2008 - 17:37 ET by mattmThe streets are empty. Trash rustles down the road past rusted barbecues, abandoned furniture, sagging homes and gardens turned to weed.
This is ____________, a suburb of ___________ and a town ravaged by the subprime mortgage crisis roiling the United States.
Faded "for sale" signs sit in front of deserted houses...
Speaking as a NEOhioan
January 29, 2008 - 18:03 ET by drillanwrCleveland is the nipple by which the liberal/democrats have had the gnawing bite of their sharp teeth firmly planted into ... for decades and decades ... and decades ...
So, when PBS's GWEN IFILL hosted the 2004 Vice Presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland ... and decided to ask (pretty much demand of VP Cheney):
Mr. Vice President, the Census Bureau ranked Cleveland as the biggest poor city in the country, 31 percent jobless rate.
You two gentlemen are pretty well off. You did well for yourselves in the private sector. What can you tell the people of Cleveland, or people of cities like Cleveland, that your administration will do to better their lives?
I personally sat forward on my couch and shouted at Cheney to say:
Well, Gwen, maybe you would be better off asking that question of the DEMOCRATS who have held office and power over Cleveland for generations ...
Bad Sally
January 29, 2008 - 18:09 ET by PoeMangonelI blame Sally Evans getting herself overextended living in two houses - one on 9422 Union Avenue and 9422 Chagrin Street.
Actually according to Goggle Earth, there is no Chagrin Street in Cleveland but there is Chagrin Blvd.
Holy S***
January 29, 2008 - 18:12 ET by HermanoYou would at least think they could interview two people with different names! Amazing! Thank you for catching that.
Just how wild is this template running?
January 29, 2008 - 18:12 ET by needleIt is pretty apparent that this is “news” generated by somebody using a template and a word processor to deprecate the economy in pre-election months of the waning Bush administration (and doing his/her bit to influence a liberal electoral outcome in November).
D. S. Hube, have you tried using your news search engine to see how often this template has been used across the nation, besides the two that you found?
I am not closely familiar with Ohio, but my impression from the past is that Shaker Heights is a relatively upscale community in Cleveland area. If this is so, then while it may be true that the housing market there is overloaded with houses for sale and some may have been on the market for a long time, it may also be true that there is no street or area that actually fits the dreary description mentioned in the template.
Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.
I think the Monday story
January 29, 2008 - 18:28 ET by JerI think the Monday story was probably an effort to correct the prior, clearly erroneous article which had misidentified the suburb.
It has been years since I have been to Shaker Heights [a close friend in college resided there, and it was one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Ohio]. The Shaker Heights described in the article is undoubtedly pure fiction.
Jer
I was in Shaker Heights
January 29, 2008 - 18:53 ET by BDI was in Shaker Heights several years ago and I do NOT remember it as a working class neighborhood, rather as a somewhat White collar community what with the University effect. Not far from Case Western if memory serves.
My commute from Shaker to
January 30, 2008 - 03:51 ET by stratmanYes.
My commute from Shaker to CWRU was about 6 minutes by car on a good day catching the lights.
It was 1 minute walking when I lived in Little Italy.
Killing them with kindness isn't working. Time to get scrappy with the Donkeys.
It's true that Shaker Heights is a fairly affluent neighborhood
January 29, 2008 - 19:35 ET by AJSHOPEbecause the median income is about $63,000, not as affluent as say Dublin with a median income of about $100,000, but still above the national average no less. That being said, I'm not so sure it was meant to be a correction because Mount Pleasant only has about 600 people in it. Now there's no saying that there can't be a lot of foreclosures and/or drug dealers, but Shaker Heights would more likely be the city that would have to keep drug dealers at bay since they are on Cleveland's east side and that's where all the gangs are. I think they may have just tried to smash the cities together.
The lower median income of
January 30, 2008 - 03:00 ET by stratmanThe lower median income of Shaker is due to a diversity mandate dating back to post-WWII to integrate the city and make available housing stock to a variety of incomes. Prior to that, Shaker easily kept median incomes elevated based on expensive housing stock, high taxes and bigotry.
Upper Arlington outside Columbus, Ohio reminds me of Shaker, though the housing is relatively new and the tudor or brick architechture is often a facade from what I've seen.
Upper Arlington and Dublin seem like great places to live. I really enjoyed going to Graeter's Ice Cream! :-)
Killing them with kindness isn't working. Time to get scrappy with the Donkeys.
... see what they MEANT to
January 29, 2008 - 18:35 ET by Warner Todd Huston... see what they MEANT to say was it was happening in the town of Mount Shaker Pleasant Heights. It's really, really bad there, ya know?
OMG!!
January 29, 2008 - 18:43 ET by c5thenTwo entire towns/neighborhoods that were made up entirely of sub-prime mortgage borrowers (those with bad credit) who also happenedc to all buy their houses at almost the same time!!
What are the odds of that happening?
Oh, wait...I get it now...It's a template that they just fill in the name of different suburbs and neighborhoods and then publish them every day for a month. Then someone in the MSM will use a nexis-lexis search and "show" that the subprime mortage crisis is a HUGE problem, because... look at all the stories written about it, and just in the Cleveland area too!
The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic. Let's get it back! Alan Keyes '08.
Hope I don't further muddy the waters
January 29, 2008 - 20:24 ET by QueenMumMount Pleasant is indeed a Cleveland neighborhood - a neighborhood in decline.
Shaker Heights is not what we usually consider as a suburb, but more like a city within the city of Cleveland. And for the record, here's a listing of properties for sale in Shaker Heights. Not exactly akin to the Mount Pleasant area.
It is indeed ridiculous to use the same descriptions for the two areas.
Power to the people!
Aha! This explains it.
January 29, 2008 - 23:33 ET by QueenMumCan it get any more convoluted? Lazy journalists indeed.
Power to the people!
Shaker Heights is my
January 30, 2008 - 00:33 ET by stratmanShaker Heights is my town!
I had written a response with all kinds of links in rebuttal to this abomination, but my session timed out on NewsBusters, and when I clicked to post my text did not post and I had to re-log in! AARRRRG!
Suffice to say others in this thread have already gotten to the bottom of this merde. Shaker may no longer be the wealthiest city per capita or have the best public school system in the US, but it's still pretty darn good. It still has the finest police/fire and city services of any place I've lived... and I have the tax payments to prove it. Any comparison of the nearby Mount Pleasant neighborhood and the city of Shaker Heights is hallucinogenic.
Here's a crummy picture of the home of the Van Sweringen brothers who built the garden community of Shaker Heights from the land once inhabited by the North Union Community of the Society of Believers (AKA the Shakers), the Rapid Transit (when I was young and more recent - cherry blossoms lining the Green Line route), the Terminal Tower at Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, and the second oldest US shopping center Shaker Square (an octagon and residing in Cleveland proper... go figure).
Totally unrelated but coincidental, my neighbor lives in Paris and is a journalist with AP! Nope, wasn't her. She's pretty sharp and knows Cleveland.
Killing them with kindness isn't working. Time to get scrappy with the Donkeys.
strat: I was interested
January 30, 2008 - 00:50 ET by Jerstrat: I was interested in this item having spent 3 or 4 days in Shaker Heights in 1966 with a college friend at his parent's house. Needless to say I was extremely impressed...obviously a very upscale, prestigious area of Cleveland.
Even though I have never been back, it was absolutely beyond belief that it could have deteroriated in the manner described in the article.
I read all [170+] comments at the site linked at the beginning of this blog. This ludicrous story is pretty well shot to pieces.
Jer
BTW, there were quite a few comments from former and current Shaker residents.
1966 was a good year! I
January 30, 2008 - 02:39 ET by stratman1966 was a good year! I wonder if I was friends with the younger brother or sister of your college friend. Shaker was a much closer community back then.
I've done some more digging into this story. In the Mount Pleasant version, the reporter talks about a home on Union Street where a Sarah Evans answers. According to the County Auditor's website, the property on Union is not owned by Miss Evans, though there is a Sarah Evans who owns a home in the Glendale neighborhood... several miles away!
For more info about Mount Pleasant, including the area it encompasses, the long term declining housing market, the and the recent push to revitalize it see here.
Shaker is an inner ring suburb of Cleveland. Along its shared borders with Cleveland, Shaker feels the socioeconomic undertow of the poorest big city in the country. But Shaker has been able to slow the encroachment of big city woes by maintaining strict housing/building codes, restricting industry and businesses, charging astronomical taxes and keeping the level of city services high.
Shaker has also been a very welcoming community, one of the first wealthy cities to proactively integrate, first with Jews following WWII and then Blacks in the 1960's. Shaker has long had an agreement that Cleveland children living on the border can go to Shaker schools. It is speculated that is why former Cleveland mayor Jane Campbell moved a couple doors down from the Shaker border so her kids could go to Shaker schools while she and her husband still fullfilled the residency requirements for Cleveland government employment. I have also heard that former Cleveland mayor Louis Stokes, the first black mayor of a major city, had the border moved a few feet over so that without moving he would reside in Cleveland instead of Shaker. Now that's power!
In a way, the liberal rules on border families allowed into Shaker schools has hastened the fraying of the socioeconomic demarcation between Shaker and Cleveland. Housing stock and properties have slipped in certain areas and there is Section Eight housing where little/none existed previously. Crime spiked due to the easy entrance and egress from Shaker into Cleveland. Fortunately the Shaker Police do a wonderful job of patrolling and responding to calls. I figure that their response time to come to my house is anywhere from 2-5 minutes. Hopefully my right to bear arms will suffice till they arrive.
Though Shaker and all Cuyahoga County is dyed in the wool Liberal, I love my city and am proud to show her off. If you pass this way again, let me know and I'll give you the nickle tour, Jer.
Killing them with kindness isn't working. Time to get scrappy with the Donkeys.
strat...I want to post a
January 30, 2008 - 03:14 ET by Jerstrat...I want to post a follow-up to you later on, but it will likely be tomorrow p.m.
Jer
I've been reading the
January 30, 2008 - 03:44 ET by stratmanI've been reading the comments to the original article. Our County Treasurer Jim Rokakis is not happy with the French article. He points to a better article which defines the issues more accurately. That article reminded me of the large effort to further integrate Shaker in the 80's which I had forgotten:
There is a great recording of a radio show with Rokakis and others discussing this rotten French article. Find "Lanigan & Malone (01-29-08 7hr)" Select the "Listen" button . The pertinent section is a little over one half way throught the recording.
Chat later, Jer.
Killing them with kindness isn't working. Time to get scrappy with the Donkeys.
10 towns/cities-7 down in RE sales, 3 up in RE sales!
January 30, 2008 - 08:56 ET by PawpawNWe hear all the gloom of Real Estate sales. Well last evening one of the big 3 must have goofed because they siad Real Estate sales down, but went on to state that in the 10 cities/towns they use as indicators, 7 were down in sales, while 3 were up in sales. That LA Calif, Las Vegas Nevada & Detroit Michigan way down[wonder why!], but Charlotte NC and 2 others up and exceeded expectations. So what is really going on!