Chris Quinn: Corporate Fascist
- Fred
- 11 minutes ago
- 4 min read
We are under no delusions as to our place in the universe at Beacon of Speech, we are a low-end, libertarian-leaning blog. We were founded out of the ashes of the Post Industrial Midwest.
Chris Quinn, on the other hand, is very delusional about his lot in life.
Officially founded in 1842, The Cleveland Plain Dealer has survived World Wars and Urban Upheaval.
In 1920, Cleveland was the 5th largest city in the United States of America and the city was primarily served by two newspapers, the aforementioned Plain Dealer, and the Cleveland Press.
Starting in the 1960's, as city centers on the East and West Coasts had exploding populations, Cleveland began to shrink.
In the 60's, there were the Riots.
In the 70's, Cleveland was known as Bomb City USA due to mob violence.
In the 80's, Cleveland was decimated by White Flight when the Cleveland City Schools instituted Bussing.
In 1982, the Cleveland Press closed, effectively leaving Cleveland as a one newspaper town. Cleveland.com was launched in 1997 as a sister company to the Plain Dealer.
The population of Cleveland fell from 915,000 in 1950 to its current population of about 365,000. The population of Cleveland proper is about the size Wichita, Kansas.
I consider myself a "Clevelander" but think of Cleveland as the 6 county area around the city. That area is the 34th largest Metroplex in America, about the size of Indianapolis.
What's my point?
In 2017, Chris Quinn took over as Editor and Publisher of the Plain Dealer and cleveland.com. In the year 2020, Quinn successfully broke the last remnants of the newspaper union and the Plain Dealer officially employed ZERO people. Now the newspaper still exists, 3 days a week, but all content is now either from non-union cleveland.com writers, or from syndicated sources.
Today, cleveland.com/Plain Dealer employs around 70 people, down from about 350 people in 2005. Every year, for the past 5 years, Chris Quinn takes to the internet and touts that cleveland.com is making money, as he lays off more and more journalists.
In the last 5 years:
Chris Quinn eliminated the comments section, claiming it became too toxic and too time-intensive to monitor.
Chris Quinn barely prints any Letters to the Editor, also too time intensive for letters over 200 words. But Quinn does find the time to publish Letters FROM the Editor every week.
Chris Quinn has one Conservative voice at cleveland.com, which he inherited, as he touts diversity. Diversity defined by Chris Quinn as people who look different saying the same thing.
Chris Quinn encourages readers to email him, then, as the gatekeeper, publishes none of those voices, except for in short quotes on his bully pulpit.
I could go on and on, but we've covered all of this before. But last month, Chris Quinn crossed the line:
His argument? He is finding more and more allies in his fight against Fascist Trump.
Listen, again, we don't like Trump either. We were on the record as asking readers NOT to vote for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024. In all three cases, we implored people to consider third-party options. In 2024, we lamented the fact that we weren't at the Libertarian Convention to throw rotten fruit at Donald Trump.
But the existence of both Beacon of Speech and cleveland.com negates the concept of Trump being a Fascist. Both websites exist through the good graces of the Constitution.
Chris Quinn, of all people, should know that words have meaning. If Trump was a true Fascist, Quinn would be penning Letters from the Editor columns from jail. Or Quinn's Kid would be imploring citizens for justice because his Dad was dragged away in the night and was found dead.
Then, a week later, Editorial Board Member Eric Foster chimed in, "yeah, and Donald Trump is Racist, too."
Both men have free speech to call the President names, but at the end of the day, that should be beneath them. Their missives on cleveland.com are not in the tradition of journalism based on the public trust, but like a blog run by Chris Quinn and his like-minded, Liberal-Elite friends.
Chris Quinn swears that's not true, but Quinn is so thin-skinned, that he banned a comic strip he didn't like...
If Donald Trump is a fascist, then so is Chris Quinn. They both fire voices they don't like, then call people they don't like names.
I had most of what was written above on an outline-
But the more I read and re-read it, it was the same things I've been saying on repeat. It started to sound like a personal vendetta.
I thought that this article would die in the Drafts Section of Beacon of Speech, but then I got quite a surprise:
Beacon of Speech didn't light up Chris Quinn, The Washington Post did. Chris Quinn was using AI to light the traditional journalism model on fire. "(Reuters') research suggests that shift comes with risks to the paper’s credibility."
In the year 2020, the Washington Post was one of the Top 5 respected newspapers in America. Those are the people calling out Chris Quinn and his Cleve-land Blog, er, website.
You don't see the Washington Post calling out the editors of the Wichita Eagle or the Indianapolis Star.