RIP Tim Russo - It Was a Helluva Ride and Hope to Make You Proud Over the Yonder

I found out my friend Tim Russo passed away two months ago. For a wonderful write up as a send off to a magnificent mind please see Edward Sweeney’s write up from October.

I had written a lengthy piece after finding out about the passing of Tim Russo late last week. That will go in the vaults of The Cleveland Leader as unpublished as I started to ramble and missed the key points when I revisited it. What I will say Tim obviously fucked up badly and there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t regret his actions that derailed a career that had endless possibilities in the media or the political world. Who fucked up more were the establishment who never forgave him for his error.

Tim had enormous respect for me because I stuck with him when the arrows began to come flying in at us at The Leader as soon as we brought him on as a writer. Russo would later recollect that the staff of my ex wife Julie Kent, the ultimate Cleveland muckraking legend Roldo Bartimole, him, and myself had an energy and the power of The Beatles. He had a point but it was more like a punk rock band who was creating their best work as commercial sales (in our case advertising dollars) plummeted. We took over the Cleveland media landscape with ease for a brief period of time which was both exhilarating and unsustainable. We were an early victim of cancel culture as we ruffled the mainstream's feathers and truthfully it was probably a blessing in disguise.

Despite the money drying up, Tim and I really pulled off a David Vs Goliath type victory kneecapping the issue statewide marijuana ballot measure out of the gate with tenacious reporting. James O’Keefe would have blushed at some of the shit we pulled off back then. I remember the night before driving to a bar in Ohio City  where we had set up an interview and him opining how easy it actually was to kill a multimillion dollar campaign. 

Tim had a very charming personality at times and also a very dark one from the years of abuse he took online. The charming personality is the one that the internet ninjas never saw but far outweighed the dark one that sadly strained our relationship at times to the point I was sadly not on good terms with him at the time of his passing which will weigh on my psyche now that is gone.

Tim wanted two things from me and as a good friend I hope to fulfil his wishes as he has now departed from this dimension. One was that I read his books that he dropped off around this time of year two years ago that have sat on my bookshelf unread to date. In a selfish way I am kind of thankful I have one more time to cherish his exquisite writing. The other thing he wanted me to do was begin writing and getting involved in media again. The reason I set this Substack up a few months back at his urging. The writing will probably be sporadic but I do plan on using my voice and my viewpoints more in a number of ways like the weird webcasts we would do on the spur of the moment. I’ll probably never have a media dance partner like Tim again at my disposal but I will try my best to fill the huge void he has left in the Cleveland blogosphere

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