Preface

Ray De Crane, a reporter and editor at The Cleveland Press for 44 years, is particularly qualified to tell the story of The Press and its legendary editor Louis B. Seltzer. De Crane knew first-hand all the editors and writers during a five-decade period (1932-1977) at The Press.

“I was at the paper during its glory years when it was acknowledged as the leading newspaper in the state of Ohio,” says DeCrane. (Time magazine in the 1960s named it one of the top papers in the country because of its devotion to reader and community service.)

For 22 of those 44 years, De Crane was at the center of action, an editor on the City Desk, working with one of the outstanding city editors in the country, Louis L. Clifford.

“Fortunately for me,” adds De Crane, “I left the paper five years before it suffered the common fate of most evening newspapers in the country – killed by television.”

The stories below were written by Ray De Crane in 1998 for The Cleveland Press web site.