May 24, 2013

Report: Tony Grossi leaving the Plain Dealer

March 7, 2012 by 29 Comments

Tony Grossi announced via his twitter feed that he will be leaving the Plain Dealer-

“After more than 30 years, I am leaving the Plain Dealer. And thanks to Peyton Manning for stealing my thunder.”

Grossi was of course removed from the Cleveland Browns beat earlier this year for a tweet about Browns owner Randy Lerner in which Grossi called Lerner “a pathetic figure, the most irrelevant billionaire in the world”.

[Related: Tony Grossi Out as Browns beat reporter]

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  • mgbode

    A many thanks for whatever he did to keep Art Modell out of the HOF.  However, he brought this upon himself.

  • @J10Cooper

    say it ain’t so! I am going to miss him, he was right in his tweet, truth hurts but people need to get over it

  • http://twitter.com/oribiasi oribiasi

    Of course he is.  Sucks that after 30 years of work for the paper he has to go out like this.  Some of the groupthink posters on the internet will say things like “good riddance” and “he was a hack anyway” but he “usually” called it like it was and he covered some miserable teams.  If I had to be that knee-deep in Cleveland sports for as long as he was, I’d throw myself off the 480 bridge a long time ago.

  • Max

    perfect. could not have said it any better

  • http://twitter.com/GHClevelandSprt Mike Stein

    He’s moving to STO, I hear. To work for the world’s most irrelevant millionaire.

  • http://twitter.com/oribiasi oribiasi

    Yeah, how dare he vent about a billionaire who is aloof about the team his father willed him.  He sure learned his lesson.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Eugene-Woodland/100001399581581 Eugene Woodland

    IDGAF – unless this breaks the curse?

  • MrCleaveland

    In addition to keeping that dirtbag Modell out of the HOF, Tony also worked very hard to get Gene Hickerson in, and he deserves much credit for both.

  • http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/ Scott @ WFNY

    I wonder if he would’ve had the Hillis rebuttal have you still been on the beat. Say what you want about Mary Kay but she has written some excellent pieces since taking over — the Gerard Warren piece was stellar. Bill B was right up there.

  • http://www.facebook.com/davelb87 David W. Elbrecht

    Tony was an outstanding reporter for a long time, but in recent years he has allowed his personal feelings toward ownership to get in the way of objectivity…the now infamous tweet being the most glaring example of many. Once a beat writer is no longer able to objectively report the facts they lose all credibility. Sadly, that’s what happened to Tony.

  • Thompsons6

    Perfect !! You took the words right out of my mouth.

  • http://twitter.com/oribiasi oribiasi

    Meh, so what?  The guy was a Clevelander and he knew what the mood of the masses was and he wrote to engender the support of the readers, which is a basic tenet of editorial writing. 

    Maybe the most objective thing he ever said was that Lerner is a pathetic figure.  While everyone else is “YouKnowWhat-kissing” the ownership for future playoff tickets, he called it as he saw it. 

  • Harv 21

    I agree, Scott, Mary Kay has done some good work already, and infuses the beat with a little energy.
     
    My take on Grossi is that he burned out, had it up to here, whatever. Could see it in his failure to be on top of stories, hear it in his voice in podcasts, and the tweet was a manifestation of that. He knows you can’t let something like that tweet slip and still pretend to be objective. It’s sad how it ended but he had to go and MK seems to have eased right in.

  • porkchpxprss

    He should have asked, or they should have moved him to a more op-ed position.  I’m sure he and they knew for quite some time that the “thrill” of covering this team as a beat reporter had left him, and they and he should have found a better position for him. 

  • Wow

    Good he was terrible.

  • EyesAbove

    I think its silly that he was fired for that Tweet about Lerner, however his time had come. I never thought Grossi was much of a writer. 

  • Bherzog1

    He didn’t report anything outside of what’s said in press conferences, and was condescending in his remarks regarding football and the Browns to fans. He had an awesome opportunity/job yet became lackluster after too many years. Read a beat guy like what Brian Windhorst did here, and does in MIA and you’ll see what the possibilities of a position like that are. Grossi needed to be replaced years ago, so I don’t feel bad at all for what happened after that very public mistake.

  • http://twitter.com/NoWearMan714 Mike Bogucci

    I don’t see anywhere where he was “fired”. 

    Also, “And thanks to Peyton Manning for stealing my thunder”….a snide douchebag right to the end.

    I will hold the door so it doesn’t hit him on the back side.  It’s the least I can do for the Modell efforts.

  • rls321321

    The Peyton Manning joke about stealing his thunder was funny, not snide.
    IT”S called a sense of humor. I am assuming you think all writers are douchebags

  • http://twitter.com/oribiasi oribiasi

    Clearly you haven’t been on this message board that is not to be called a message board for long.  Anything innovative or funny is usually “snide” or “mean” or outright deleted.  Haha.

  • BenRM

    I always thought he was a hackneyed writer.

  • http://www.facebook.com/davidtoddbaker David Baker

    I don’t get why so many people hate Tony. I put him up there with Windhorst as one of my favorite Cleveland sports writers. I’ll admit that he isn’t as gifted a writer or reporter as Brian, but I thought he made what was often a terrible and boring team pretty entertaining to follow. And, for a beat writer, he felt like “one of us,” which I appreciate. I’ll really miss his “Hey Tony” columns. Hope he finds another outlet to cover the Browns. 

    On the positive side, unlike when Brian left, there is a very capable writer waiting in the wings to step into the lead position. I think Mary Kay is great and probably even does a better job reporting than Tony did (just off the top of my head, it feels like she usually had the meatier and more surprising stories), so I don’t think there will be the sort of void we felt when Brian left.

  • BrownsFanBrad

    Yes, it was snide and funny, but it also points to that smug, self-important vibe that Grossi puts out. He always struck me as a sports reporter who seemed to think he was much smarter and more insightful than his readers.

  • 5KMD

    It is rarely that simple. He probably had been upsetting the wrong people for some time and this was their perfect excuse to get rid of him.

  • cmm13

    Nice language rls321321.

    The ESPN or cleveland.com message boards can be found at their respective websites.

  • http://twitter.com/oribiasi oribiasi

    Maybe he was.  He covered the Browns for 20 years; if I do anything for 20 years I better be smarter than a lot of other people in that area of whatever I did for 20 years.

  • The_Real_Shamrock

    According to Les Levine, who will be having Grossi on as a guest in the near future, he left to join an internet sports based web site, he was not fired.  In any regard it’s clear the Browns probably pressured The Plain Dealer after Grossi’s tweet which led to his removal on the assignment.  Personally I think they did him a favor.  If I had to cover this horrible franchise the past 12 years I would have been tweeting out of my mind.  There is only so much perfume you can spray on something that stinks for so long.

  • mgbode

    we had Tony here the whole time?

  • The Truth is the Truth

    Now, the PD needs to get rid of Bill Livingston and Mary Kay Cabot.  1/3 the way there.  You will be forgotten and not missed.