The Plain Dealer is the major daily newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It has the largest circulation of any Ohio newspaper and was a top 20 newspaper for Sunday circulation in the United States as of March 2013.

As of October 2013, The Plain Dealer had more than 537,000 daily readers and 856,000 readers on Sunday. The Plain Dealer's media market, the Cleveland-Akron DMA (Designated Market Area), is one of the Top 20 markets in the United States. With a population of 3.8 million people, it is the fourth-largest market in the Midwest, and Ohio's largest media market.

In April 2013 The Plain Dealer announced it would reduce home delivery to four days a week, including Sunday.This went into effect on August 5, 2013. A daily version of The Plain Dealer is available electronically as well as in print at stores and newsstands.

History and ownership
The newspaper was established in 1842, less than 50 years after Moses Cleaveland landed on the banks of the Cuyahoga River in The Flats, and is currently owned by Advance Publications (Newhouse Newspapers). The Plain Dealer Publishing Company is under the direction of Virginia Wang (general manager). The paper employs over 700 people.

The newspaper was sold on March 1, 1967, to S.I. Newhouse's newspaper chain, and has been under the control of the Newhouse family ever since. The paper was previously held by the trusts of the Holden estate, and operated as The Plain Dealer Publishing Company, part of the Forest City Publishing Company, which also published the Cleveland News until its purchase and subsequent closing by its major competitor, the Cleveland Press, owned by the E.W. Scripps Company, in 1960.

On December 18, 2005, The Plain Dealer ceased publication of its weekly Sunday Magazine, which had been published uninterrupted for over 85 years. The demise of the paper's Sunday Magazine was attributed to the high cost of newsprint and declining revenue, and the PD reassigned the editors, designers and reporters to other areas of the newspaper. It also assured readers that the stories that would formerly have appeared in the Sunday Magazine would be integrated into other areas of the paper.

On the morning of Wednesday, July 31, 2013, nearly a third of the newsroom staff was eliminated through layoffs and voluntary resignations. The Plain Dealer's corporate owner, New York-based Advance Publications Inc., a private company run by the heirs of S.I. Newhouse, under a strategy to focus more on online news delivery, had been cutting staff and publication schedules. Previously, in December 2012, under an agreement with the Newspaper Guild, nearly two dozen union newsroom staff voluntarily accepted severance packages. The July round of layoffs led to accusations by the Guild that management had misled the union by cutting more employees than had been agreed upon.

On August 5, 2013, The Northeast Ohio Media Group launched and The Plain Dealer Publishing Company was formed. Northeast Ohio Media Group operates cleveland.com and Sun News and is responsible for all multimedia ad sales and marketing for The Plain Dealer, Sun News and cleveland.com. It also provides content to The Plain Dealer, cleveland.com and Sun News. The Plain Dealer Publishing Company provides content and publishes in print seven days a week. The company also provides production, distribution, finance, information technology, accounting and other support services for the Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and Northeast Ohio Media Group.

Pricing, distribution, circulation
The daily paper costs $1 and the Sunday/Thanksgiving Day edition is $2.25 at newsstands/newsracks. The full subscription weekly price is $4.65. These prices only apply to The Plain Dealer's home delivery area, which are the Northeast Ohio counties of Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga, Portage, Erie, Ottawa, Summit, Ashtabula, Medina and Lorain. The Plain Dealer is however, available all over the state at select newsstands, including in the state capital, Columbus, and anywhere in the US or world via US mail service. The newspaper reported daily readership of 543,110 and Sunday readership of 858,376 as of October, 2013.

Effective August 5, 2013, home delivery was reduced to four days a week; a "premium" (full) edition on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, and a bonus version on Saturday. Subscribers to the three premium editions have access to a digital version seven days a week, which is an exact replica of the morning's paper. A print edition is still available daily at stores, newsracks and newsstands.

Bureaus
The Plain Dealer formerly operated a variety of news bureaus. By the middle of 2014, both the state capital bureau in Columbus and the Washington bureau were shifted to the Northeast Ohio Media Group, as shown by the affiliations of their bureau chiefs.

Major sections
The Plain Dealer is organized into several major sections, depending on the day of the week. The Sunday edition is, as with any major U.S. daily newspaper, the largest edition of the week. The current organization took effect August 5, 2013.

Major sections printed in most editions include:
All editions
News 
Local, state, national, and international news, editorial/op-ed page, and weather
Business 
Local and national business news, stocks, bonds.
Sports 
Cleveland and national sports news and commentary. The sports section focuses its beat reporters on the Browns, Cavaliers, Indians, Cleveland State Vikings men's basketball, Mid-American Conference football and basketball and Ohio State Buckeyes football and men's basketball.
Diversions 
Includes comics (printed in full color), TV listings, and the Dear Abby advice column.
Classifieds 
Home, auto, jobs, other classified advertising.
Weekly features

On October 8, 1922, The Plain Dealer, published an article written Royal S. Copeland telling Clevelanders to "Eat Candy as a Part of Your Daily Meal and Enjoy the Best of Health."
Friday! Magazine 
Weekend magazine featuring movie reviews, event calendars, restaurant reviews and other cultural/nightlife pieces. (Friday)
Taste 
Articles and stories about the latest trends in food, locally and nationally (Wednesday)
North Coast 
detailing local trends and community stories. (Sunday)
Arts 
expanded arts section. (Sunday)
Business 
expanded business section. (Sunday)
Buckeyes Extra 
expanded Ohio State football coverage. (Sunday)
Browns Extra 
expanded Browns coverage (Monday)
Forum 
expanded editorial and opinion section. (Sunday)
Discontinued sections
The Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine 
was discontinued as of December 18, 2005
Style 
was discontinued and merged into Style & Taste as of July 1, 2008
PDQ

Style
The Plain Dealer employs a modern styling of a daily newspaper, but has undergone dramatic stylistic changes in the past few years to update the print edition's look. Weekday and Sunday editions regularly feature front pages with content boxes on the upper part of the page detailing news inside. The physical width of the paper has been reduced in recent years as well, a trend throughout the newspaper industry.

Employees
Executive staff and editors (Plain Dealer Publishing)
Virginia Wang, General Manager
Joseph J. Bowman, Vice President of Operations
William Calaiacovo, Senior Vice President, Labor Relations, Human Resources, and Organizational Development
Thomas Fladung, Managing Editor
William V. Mickey, Vice President of Information Systems
Howard Patterson, Controller
Frank Horvath, Vice President, Circulation and Product Distribution

Executive staff and editors (Northeast Ohio Media Group)
Andrea Hogben, President
Mike Maleski, Vice President of Sales & Marketing
Chris Quinn, Vice President of Content
Michael Tribble, Director of Product Innovation
Elizabeth Sullivan, Director of Opinion

Columnists
Regina Brett
Ted Diadiun, Reader Representative
Brent Larkin
Michael McIntyre
Phillip Morris
Kevin O'Brien
Thomas Suddes – Ohio politics & government
Bill Livingston – sports
Terry Pluto – sports/religion
Bud Shaw – sports
Michael Heaton – "Minister of Culture"
Sheryl Harris – consumer affairs
Teresa Dixon Murray – personal finance

Criticism and controversies
Political leanings
The Plain Dealer has been criticized by liberal columnists for staking out generally conservative positions on its editorial page, despite serving a predominantly Democratic readership base. In 2004, the editorial board voted to endorse John Kerry; after publisher Alex Machaskee overruled it, ordering the board to write an endorsement of George W. Bush, editorial page editor Brent Larkin managed to talk Machaskee into withholding an endorsement. The news coverage is generally more neutral, with national and international news often culled from wire services, including the New York Times'.

The paper had also been accused of being too soft on Sen. George Voinovich, and in the 2004 election cycle for the U.S. Senate, not providing fair coverage, if any, to Voinovich's opponent, State Sen. Eric Fingerhut, a Democrat.

Publishing concealed weapons permit holder lists
In 2005, the newspaper twice published lists of concealed weapon permit holders from the 5 counties around Cleveland. Editor Doug Clifton defended the paper's decision, sparking a feud with a pro-carry lobbyist group. State Senator Steve Austria called it abuse of the media access privilege, saying publishing these names would threaten the safety of the men and women who obtain these permits. An Ohio gun rights group then published Clifton's home address and phone number.