As someone who has spent a lifetime in the information business, I love quotes about the value of an informed public.

“A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny,” may be my favorite, from Thomas Jefferson, who also said, “An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.”

And you’ve got to like this, from James Madison: “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

For much of our history, America was a land loaded with good information sources for the public. Newspapers were everywhere, covering the tiniest of towns and the biggest cities. They were the watchdogs, offering people objective takes on what their governments were doing. Many areas of the nation also had robust television and radio news teams as well.

All that has changed in the past couple of decades. Most small towns no longer have newspapers, and in many that do, the coverage is much diminished. Television newsrooms have been hit by the same hard economics as newspapers. Cleveland remains an anomaly, with stronger news coverage than in other cities our size.

Our newsroom is smaller than in it was, but it’s still firing on all cylinders. You need look no farther than our Delinquent series, which started this week. And the city still has four strong television newsrooms covering the town, in addition to radio stations and some others.

All of us want to do more, however. We all want to ensure that people in our community are informed, as a defense against that tyranny Jefferson spoke of. We know from what happened with Issue 1 last August that an informed electorate keeps tyrannical government leaders in their place.

This unusually long (for me) wind-up leads to this point: Our newsroom has formed a partnership with the newsroom at WKYC-TV.

Micki Byrnes suggested this idea last summer, based on a model she saw working elsewhere, and we embraced it immediately. Our thinking is that WKYC reaches an audience that we do not, and we reach an audience that WKYC does not. Through this partnership, more people will be informed by the work each newsroom produces.

We’ve long appreciated the emphasis WKYC places on local news coverage and community, and a lot of credit goes to Micki. She has been president and general manager for a decade and started at the station 17 years before that. You don’t last that long without being great at the job, and her focus shows through every day in the quality of the station’s work.

Evidently, I don’t need to tell you any of this. In a message to subscribers to my daily texts about what our newsroom is working on, I previewed this column about the partnership. I received more than 100 replies, with most expressing admiration for WKYC and excitement about our working together. I shared the love by sending a bunch of the responses to Micki and veteran anchor Russ Mitchell.

Sharing content is not the only goal of the collaboration. We also plan to work together on some major projects, capitalizing on each newsroom’s strengths to build content that works on all platforms.

We’re especially excited to share the terrific weather content of WKYC’s much loved team, including Betsy Kling and Holly Strano.

We anticipate this partnership will grow in ways we cannot yet predict, but it should be a fun journey wherever it takes us. For now, you’re already seeing pieces on our site about stories that WKYC has reported, along with video from the station. You might also see writers from our newsroom talking about their stories at WKYC, as has long been the case with our chief Browns writer, Mary Kay Cabot.

Our newsrooms remain independent. We each decide what content to feature. But our mutual respect should lead to a fruitful collaboration that better informs Northeast Ohio.

A big thanks to Micki for taking the initiative and suggesting this.

Separately, my column last week about new newsletters resulted in some frustrated readers. I explained how we were making the existing Terry Pluto weekly newsletter available to subscribers only, but the sign-up button disappeared from the page when I sent you. I’m still not sure why.

If you subscribe to cleveland.com or The Plain Dealer, Terry’s newsletters is included in your subscription. If you are not a subscriber, you can receive a few weeks of Terry’s newsletter as a free trial. In either case, click on this link to sign up: https://tinyurl.com/signupforterry

I'm at cquinn@cleveland.com

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