Roldo Bartimole is an American journalist. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He worked for a series of newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The Cleveland Plain Dealer, before founding his own newsletter, Point of View, in 1968. In 1991, he was the recipient of the second annual Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage. Upon his induction in 2004 to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, Editor & Publisher described him as "Cleveland's most famous and iconoclastic media critic." He has been a critic of the Cleveland, Ohio, political scene since Point of View's founding and continues to report and comment on Cleveland politics today. Bartimole wrote for various other publications, both online and offline, following his final issue of Point of View. Among them were The Cleveland Edition, the Cleveland Free Times, Cool Cleveland, and a blog, Have Coffee Will Write. He continued to report on and make observations about Cleveland politics. In 2018, he announced his retirement from journalism. However, he began writing again for Have Coffee Will Write in 2019.
Point of View
Bartimole published his newsletter, Point of View, for 32 years. At one point, more than 1,700 people subscribed to it. Politicians, social activists, journalists and members of the business community comprised much of the readership. He frequently wrote about Cleveland politician Dennis Kucinich, who would later be a candidate for President of the United States. At age 21, during his first campaign for public office in Cleveland, Kucinich told Bartimole he aspired to run for president someday. Point of View's subscriber base was at its peak when Kucinich was Mayor of Cleveland.
Bartimole's coverage of Cleveland politics and especially his coverage of its city council made him a controversial figure at city hall. In 1981, Council PresidentGeorge Forbes, angered by an article Bartimole had written, ordered him to leave a city council caucus meeting that Forbes said was not a public meeting. Bartimole refused. Forbes then confronted Bartimole, grabbed him and forcibly ejected him from the hotelmeeting room.
