Storytelling and investigating in and around Cleveland
More than 20 years of bold storytelling, pursuing original investigations and delivering deadline news for print, digital and broadcast media.
Always evolving, I’m now Managing Editor of News at Signal Cleveland, a new nonprofit newsroom and more.
Most recently, I was an enterprise reporter at WKYC Channel 3. Prior to that I spent 19 years at The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.
Mark Naymik Reel
You can watch full packages on my story page.
During the pandemic, I worked primarily from the backseat of my car, which was my mobile studio. The office doesn’t matter. A desire to tell stories is more important.
The hallmark of my columns is the watchdog and enterprise reporting that shape my opinions and calls to action.
On-scene and saturation reporting underpin my feature writing.
And my experience interacting with newsmakers, from U.S. presidents to neighborhood activists, give credibility and perspective to my live news coverage on broadcast and digital platforms.
Scrappy
Having started my journalism career with alternative weeklies in Cleveland and Philadelphia, I’ve always taken on the hard-to-get stories and challenged the popular narrative.
Productive
As a reporter and metro columnist with The Plain Dealer and its digital brand, cleveland.com, for 19 years, I covered breaking news, government, politics and campaigns, including presidential and statewide races. I also produced stories on inner-city and suburban communities and their characters.
Visual
To keep up with the digital newsroom, I invested my personal time in developing skills as a photographer and visual storyteller. My photos were published often in The Plain Dealer and on cleveland.com. (Some are featured throughout this site.)
And I collaborated on three documentary films, including “The Girlfriends Club,” named best Ohio short at the 2011 Cleveland International Film Festival, and “The Ocularist,” which screened in November 2016 at multiple film festivals and aired on Cleveland’s WVIZ public television station in April 2017.
What others say about me:
Scene Magazine on my move to WKYC Channel 3 after 19 years at The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com:
"The move will undoubtedly be a blow to cleveland.com's watchdog coverage, of which he produced a lion's share, and will by the same token be a boon to WKYC's. The good news is that he'll still be providing Cleveland with accountability reporting of the highest quality." -- Scene Magazine, July 2019
Named one of Cleveland Magazine’s 2019 Most Interesting People:
“Naymik has spent the last year poking Cleveland’s powerful in their well-deserving eyes. The Cleveland.com columnist pried the city’s secret Amazon bid loose through a Court of Claims complaint, and, in another blockbuster story, unearthed questionable accounting at a community development corporation in Cleveland City Councilman Ken Johnson’s ward. After yet more columns about Johnson’s practices, the FBI reportedly opened an investigation." – Cleveland Magazine, January 2019
