A Cleveland Radio Host Has Been Playing Jazz for 53 Years: CLE Daily

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🏈 Watson Gets the Nod: Todd Monken named Deshaun Watson QB1 for the Sept. 13 opener against Jacksonville over Shedeur Sanders Monday, just two days after Cleveland fans booed him off the field in the preseason finale. It's Watson's first start since re-tearing his Achilles in January 2025.

🚨 Bullying Complaint Ends in a Transfer: A Cleveland mother says her 15-year-old son was beaten unconscious in a Max S. Hayes stairwell after a year of bullying the district knew about. Cleveland 19 found only two three-day suspensions followed, and he won't return to the school this fall.

ICYMI: The Cleveland Museum of Art's ancient Boar Vessel became an internet meme in 2015 — and the sudden fame led conservators to quietly test whether the "ancient" pottery was secretly a fake.

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Trivia Question

What diplomat and namesake of a Cleveland high school married into a prominent Cleveland family, lived on Millionaire’s Row on Euclid Avenue and worked in the administrations of three separate Ohio-born presidents?

Music: A Cleveland radio host has been playing jazz on the same station for 53 years.

By Lydia Koszegi

Jim Szabo went on the air in 1973 with five jazz records to his name. Fifty-three years later, he's still on Friday nights, hosting "Down by the Cuyahoga" on WRUW-FM 91.1, a volunteer job he's kept up through an entire career and beyond.

• From AM Static to FM Airwaves: Growing up in Warrensville Heights, Szabo scanned AM radio until he landed on Dave Hawthorne's jazz show on WJW — the records he won from radio contests became the first hour of his own program.

• Sink or Swim: He got his FCC license before enrolling at Case Western Reserve in 1973, working his way from assisting a DJ to hosting a full show pulled from WRUW's jazz collection. "It was definitely a 'throw him in the pool and see if he could swim' kind of a moment," he says.

• Building a Scene: In 1977, Szabo helped found the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society, whose concert series later helped launch Tri-C JazzFest through a 1980 partnership with Cuyahoga Community College.

• Global Reach, Same Chair: WRUW's signal covers Northeast Ohio, western Pennsylvania and southern Ontario, and online streaming now puts his Friday show in front of listeners in seven states and two countries.

Worth Noting: Szabo was offered the Tri-C JazzFest Legend honor in 2021 and turned it down, feeling others deserved it more. This year, he finally accepted.

Jim Szabo: "The college is a bedrock that always has good music in mind or good programming that's needed in the area. And so I'm happy to carry the banner for that."

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

A library strike was avoided at the last minute. After 11 months and 35 bargaining sessions, SEIU Local 1199 and Cleveland Public Library reached a tentative contract deal Monday, just ahead of the noon strike deadline. Union members still need to vote to ratify it. 

San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York was arrested in East Palestine over the weekend. East Palestine police, assisted by the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Task Force, arrested York Sunday on a prostitution charge that was later amended to disorderly conduct. He pleaded no contest Monday and was sentenced to two days in the Columbiana County Jail and $1,150 in fines. York graduated from Cardinal Mooney. 

Ohio's kids are falling behind on vaccinations as measles cases climb. Just 86.4% of Cuyahoga County kindergartners met the state's vaccine requirement last school year, which is well short of the 95% threshold needed for herd immunity, as pandemic-era hesitancy lingers and measles cases tick up statewide.

A stalled federal budget is putting 55 Cleveland households at risk of eviction. HUD has been slow to release this year's funding, so the city can't renew its contract with EDEN, the nonprofit that pays landlords' rental-subsidy checks directly. Tenants are protected through Oct. 31, but landlords are covering the gap out of pocket in the meantime. 

Cleveland State students are back to paying full fare for the bus. The university ended its U-Pass program with GCRTA for the second time in three years, citing a new state law barring "special purpose fees" applied uniformly to all students. The $57.50-a-semester unlimited pass is gone, leaving students to buy RTA's $95 monthly pass on their own.

Four Democratic judicial candidates are skipping their bar association interviews. The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party says Judge4Yourself's candidate-ranking process still isn't objective enough, even after changes made this spring. Judge4Yourself says it will rank the candidates anyway, interview or not, ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Development: NEOMED opens its first Cleveland location, in partnership with University Hospitals.

By Ken Prendergast, NEO Trans

Northeast Ohio Medical University and University Hospitals cut the ribbon Thursday on NEOMED's first-ever Cleveland location, an 8,000-square-foot space built inside the Cleveland Foundation's Warren E. Anderson MidTown Collaboration Center in Hough. It's the payoff of a $2.5 million investment the two institutions made to renovate the space.

• 50 Years Coming: NEOMED was founded in 1973 by Kent State, Akron and Youngstown State to serve Rootstown. Until now, the med school has had almost no footprint in Cleveland, a city dominated by health care giants.

• New Neighbors: The space sits inside a three-story, 95,000-square-foot building that also houses Case Western's Population Health Research Center, University Hospitals' Diabetes Research Center, the Cleveland Institute of Art's Media Lab and JumpStart's offices.

• AI and Maternal Health on the Agenda: The hub anchors NEOMED's "Bench to Bedside" innovation program and hosts joint work with UH on AI in health care and on improving maternal and child health outcomes.

• Built on 1,000-Plus Students: NEOMED enrolled 1,032 students last fall across four colleges: medicine, pharmacy, dentistry and graduate studies. Many already complete clinical training at Cleveland hospitals.

NEOMED President John Langell: "By embedding our programs and partnerships in the heart of Cleveland, we are accelerating the pathway from idea to implementation, and ensuring that those innovations improve lives across the region."

Read the full story.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer

What year was Cleveland officially incorporated as a city? 1836

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

Nobody is celebrating this. Deshaun Watson will start the 2026 opener for the Browns, and the case Todd Monken makes for him — seven seasons of experience, a healthy Achilles. And that lands with a thud. The fans booed him at every turn on Saturday. The contract explains more than the depth chart does: $230 million fully guaranteed, 19 starts in three seasons, roughly $86 million still on the cap after this year. 

The honest problem is that the alternative hasn't made the case either. Shedeur Sanders has the crowd, and the split reps all spring and camp, and not much else to show for it. So the Browns open another season the way they've opened most since 1999, hoping the quarterback question answers itself. The draft is in April. Expect three new quarterbacks next season.

— Ron Ledgard, Managing Editor

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