Not Funny: Stop Joking About the Cuyahoga River Fire

I hate when people make fun of Cleveland, and I really hate when journalists are too lazy to come up with an original lede. So this summer’s coverage of the Republican National Convention, which never failed to use the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire as a laugh line, had me in a near-constant state of rage. I wrote something about it for Climate Desk.

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Firefighters attempt to extinguish the flames of the 1952 Cuyahoga River fire. Image courtesy of Cleveland State Library Special Collections via Cleveland Historical.

 

Published by Sally

I’m the deputy managing editor at strategy + business, a freelance editor at Belt, and the former web manager at The New Yorker. My writing and editing also has appeared in The New York Times, The Independent, the Observer, the Rumpus, the Cleveland Clinic Press, and Northern Ohio Live. Additionally, I was a founding team member of Maven, a healthcare app for women. I live in Brooklyn with my husband, the musician and writer Mike Errico, and our daughter. Follow me @sally_errico.