Point of Reviəw: 25 Years of Cleveland Mayors

Essay
Written By Roldo Bartimole

Image by Angelo Maneage

Roldo Bartimole is an independent journalist who started a political newsletter in 1968 following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The bi-weekly newsletter, Point of View, ran from June 1968 to December 2000. The four-page sheet dealt with city politics, business, charity, and civic behavior in Cleveland, Ohio. For the last 21 years Bartimole has been writing for alternative newspapers and websites, particularly Have Coffee Will Write. In September 2021 he decided at 88 he would write no more. Cleveland Review of Books is pleased to republish selections from Bartimole’s extensive work here, in an ongoing series, Point of Reviəw.

Who Really Governs?

Originally published in July of 1992, this special double issue of Point of View comprised an alternative history of Cleveland’s mayoral past to explore a foundational question of American politics: who governs?

The typewritten, newsprinted, hand-scanned pages of this document live on among the archives of the Cleveland State University library’s periodicals collection, complete with a postage-paid subscription renewal on the back page. Read it in full at Cleveland Memory Project, here.

Roldo Bartimole

Roldo Bartimole is a veteran writer/reporter. He wrote and published a bi-weekly newsletter in and about Cleveland for 32 years, and has been writing for Cleveland alternative newspapers and websites, including Have Coffee Will Write. Here are a few cheers for him: 

“Cheers Roldo. If every city had a watchdog even half as fierce as you, we’d all be better off. Long may you bark and bite.” —Gloria Cooper, managing editor, Columbia Journalism Review. 1993.

“If Willie Nelson sang songs about journalists instead of cowboys, he’d be singing about Roldo.”

“Thomas Paine was probably a pain in the ass, too.” —Terry Sheridan in a story in Akron Beacon Journal. 1983.

“An urban I. F. Stone.” —Mother Jones. 1978.

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