The recent losses to The Plain Dealer are great. I don’t know quite what to make of the exodus, some voluntary, some not. Everyone deserves a special recognition but I would like to take a moment to reflect upon a reporter I much admired and tried to emulate. I am going to miss David Briggs and so will Cleveland.

Few writers knew us or our readers so well. As religion writer, David covered our most powerful institutions--the houses of worship. A cultural rainbow. It was a marvel to watch him work. Tall as a gazelle, with a deep voice and a soft, ministerial bearing, he stood out and he blended in. I saw him prostrate himself on the floor of the grand mosque to join the prayer ranks facing Mecca. I saw him bow in proper prayer-like Hindu greeting in the South Asian community.

He knew the Jewish High Holy Days from the Catholic holy days of obligation and treated them all with respect and intellectual curiosity. As a colleague observed, David wrote about the forest not the trees.

I was a regular reader of his Saturday essays. They always provoke thought, whether he was describing the nightmare of growing up with an alcoholic parent or explaining why American Indians are humiliated by Chief Wahoo. He insisted we could all be better, as journalists, as a city. I think it’s because he believed in us. Really, he’s irreplaceable.
Bob Smith