Name Roldo Bartimole | ||
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Roldo Bartimole (born April 5, 1933) is an American journalist. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He worked for a series of newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The Cleveland Plain Dealer, before founding his own newsletter, Point of View, in 1968. In 1991, he was the recipient of the second annual Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage. Upon his induction in 2004 to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, Editor & Publisher described him as "Cleveland's most famous and iconoclastic media critic." He has been a critic of the Cleveland, Ohio, political scene since Point of View's founding and continues to report and comment on Cleveland politics today.
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Point of View
Bartimole published his newsletter, Point of View, for 32 years. At one point, more than 1,700 people subscribed to it. Politicians, social activists, journalists and members of the business community comprised much of the readership. He frequently wrote about Cleveland politician Dennis Kucinich, who would later be a candidate for U.S. president. At age 21, during his first campaign for public office in Cleveland, Kucinich told Bartimole he aspired to run for president of the United States some day. Point of View's subscriber base was at its peak during the time that Kucinich was Mayor of Cleveland.
Forcible removal from Cleveland City Council chambers
Bartimole's coverage of Cleveland politics and especially his coverage of its city council made him a controversial figure at city hall. In 1981, Council President George Forbes, angered by an article Bartimole had written, ordered him to leave a city council caucus meeting that Forbes said was not a public meeting. Bartimole refused. Forbes then confronted Bartimole, grabbed him and forcibly ejected him from the hotel meeting room.