Enquirer and WLW want to convince us we're a small town. As soon as people realize we're actually a big city, Enquirer and WLW become irrelevant.

It is amazing to me if you don't watch the news or read Cincinnati.com or listen to WLW, you actually think you are in a big city...

 

Or, talk to people who don't live in Ohio.  Or, talk to people who live in Cincinnati who don't listen to WLW or read the Enquirer, etc.  They don't think it is a little city.

 

I was with my Aunts and Uncles this past weekend, and my uncle lived in Indianapolis for a long time and he is a huge fan of Indy, but he knows Cincinnati fairly well.  My cousin visited UC and they talked of it being a big city, not a small city with parking issues, etc.

 

the funny thing is that I think most of the people who frequent downtown and OTR a lot don't even read WLW or Cincinnati.com.  People who want to hear bad news seek it out...

 

My friends who have visited all think it is a big city.  Although comparing it to Des Moines IA it really is, but even then they thought it was bigger than STL or KC which is where they have been a lot of times.  When my dad visited he was, I wouldn't say surprised, but said something a long the lines of, "Man I didn't really realize Cincinnati had such a big skyline and all these in city commercial districts.."

 

I think a lot of people traveling to the All Star Game will have the same feel.  It is almost like when you are worried when your brother is going to go out with you because you don't always agree with him or think he will embarrass you, but then when he is around your friends everyone loves him.  I think that is the fear that a lot of native Cincinnatians have, they don't realize how nice of a city this is.

Moved All Star Game discussion to the appropriate thread.

You stay classy, Enquirer.

When have the ever been classy?

When have the ever been classy?

Touche.

They changed the headline.

You know what kind of people criticize Cranley? Potty mouths, that's who!

Wow. Somebody probably will lose their job over that, no?

Today, the Enquirer used the word "poop" in a headline, and I found it a little bit funny since they infamously used the word "S#!+" in a headline last month (see mattsledge[/member]'s screenshot above). So I tweeted the following:

 

TIL it’s ok to put both “s#!t” and “poop” in Enquirer headlines.

 

Apparently the Enquirer's social media team did not find this funny, as they have blocked me on Twitter.

Never mind...

The Enquirer today endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. It is possibly the first time in the paper's history that they have chosen the Democratic candidate. The comments section is full of a lot of angry people saying they're going to cancel their subscriptions.

Newspaper endorsements do not mean anything anymore.

The Enquirer today endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. It is possibly the first time in the paper's history that they have chosen the Democratic candidate. The comments section is full of a lot of angry people saying they're going to cancel their subscriptions.

 

 

 

"Welllllllllllll.... let's seeeeeeee. The Enquirer has finally shown its true colors! Bunch of criminals just like their candidate!" -- Harold C. Clark, Mason

I'd be curious to know if they did lose a lot of subscriptions over that. I bet they lost at least a handful, and they can't really have all that many left anyway.

The Enquirer is now blocking people who use ad blockers:

 

 

Blocking the following script fixes this:

 

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/uxstatic/cincinnati/uscp-web-static-1942.0/jsb/apps/overlay/pages/story-overlay.js

FWIW, I use an ad blocker on my Chromebook and the site loads up fine.

Here's an interesting blog post about the Enquirer's coming demise:

 

https://medium.com/@waterbabyben/the-slow-death-of-the-cincinnati-enquirer-63a85e4a1a02#.vgro8s1xh

I just read that. I appreciated his insight into things like:

 

We had fun — that is, when we weren’t fearing for our jobs due to lack of web traffic. This was measured on a daily basis. Emails were sent every morning with a leaderboard of whose articles got the most views. Eyes sat glued to screen as you scanned the sheet for your ranking. I’d see similar lists when I worked in competitive sales.

 

But no worries, good ol’ Doc was always there to make up any slack. My colleague, a producer at the paper, informed me that Daugherty’s articles alone account for over half of all Enquirer web traffic and readership.

 

He definitely started to lose me when he said:

 

First of all, Pittsburgh — like Ben Roethlisberger — is everything no one should ever want to be.

 

I'm not sure if he's just being tongue-in-cheek, but we definitely have a lot to learn from Pittsburgh (as they do from us). If it was completely a joke, that fine, but at this moment, his narrative started to veer from informative to editorializing. I don't think I can take his story seriously when states things like:

 

Characters and businessmen like Mayor Cranley and Bob Castellini were to be viewed with suspicion if not disdain. Anyone pushing for the Streetcar deserved to be heard with both ears and a smile. Steve Leeper at 3CDC was Satan. But hey, use them all — if you tag big names in an article, it means pageviews.

 

Really? They were pushers of the streetcar? They don't like Bob Castellini or Cranley? They put 3CDC in a bad light? I have seen them report on 3CDC with a little bit of uncertainty and pointing out the complaints some in the neighborhood have, but I've never noticed a tone of disdain toward them. And I'm fairly positive of 3CDC, so I think I would see the negativity toward them pretty quickly. Then he quickly delved into a rant that went into what I assume are vast exaggerations and his personal takeaway, not what most in the newsroom would agree is happening.

 

I hold a lot of his conclusions suspect to his own personal beliefs, but I appreciated the actual anecdotes about what happens in the newsroom (the number of clicks you receive, the push for more content that generates clicks, lack of proofreading, etc).

So the shift went from selling old people in Warren County papers to web clicks. Is that why they eased up on the streetcar a little?

^His post was really good until he started with the Pittsburgh bashing, in that moment he's no better than the old time Cincinnati good ole boys he claims to dislike. If anything, Cincinnati has a lot to learn from Pittsburgh. Sports aside, Pittsburgh is very comparable. I hate how people can't separate that. I'll hate on the Steelers, Buccos, and Pens all day, but city vs. city - Pittsburgh has a lot of examples of "How Cincinnati would be if it was done right." Not to mention, Pitt has a massive amount of civic pride that you don't find here.

This is depressing. I've known so many to come and go from the Enquirer and those who have remained are looking to leave the sinking ship. But the whole notion that newspapers are now solely focused on "clicks" is nothing new - this happens at BuzzFeed and the glorified New York Times. If your content isn't being read, it's not bringing in revenue. In the "old days" of print, you had no way to quantify reads - so you estimated. Now those same reporters and editors are held accountable which has the side effect of click bait articles.

^Nevertheless, the Enquirer could adapt. It just does so at a glacier's pace and comes off disengenuine when It does.

I think one of the best points made is this one:

 

Most of the folks I worked with were new recruits not much older than I. Few were from Cincinnati. Many had lived here all of three months.

 

This is something that has bothered me in recent years. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it is but there does seem to be a disconnect between the Enquirer and Cincinnati. One blatant example was how frequently they got neighborhood names and/or spellings wrong. They seem to have fixed that in the past year or two but there's still something that just feels wrong about so much of their content. I get so much more insight into the complexity and nuances of local issues from this forum than I do from Enquirer articles.

Screwing up stuff like that is bad since Cincinnatians like Cincinnati stuff a lot. Putting 1492 instead of 4192 is a disaster

Of course you want to have local experts reporting on local issues... but the idea that somebody who didn't grow up here is incapable of doing good, interesting, insightful reporting is a clear example of the parochial perspective that makes some people wary of outsiders and - in turn - makes it hard for outsiders to feel welcome.

I last mixed with Enquirer reporters out in the field back in 2010-2011, when I was laid off, and again in I think 2013 or 2014, when my company worked second shift hours for two weeks during construction.  I used to go to media days with my camera fairly often.  None of those people were kicking ass.  They frequently asked dull questions or none at all.  They just didn't grasp Planet Earth. 

 

If I had been born 20 years earlier, I would have been one of those people laid off from a newspaper mid-career.  I decided to give up on it in 2005 (except for working for an entertainment tabloid in 2007).  I don't get how there are young people coming up who have any enthusiasm for working for a newspaper like this guy when it's so much more obvious that the industry is doomed than it was in 2005. 

Yeah, him blaming the failing of the enquirer on them changing their views and seeing Cincinnati as a provincial back-water town seem way off base. First of all, I still think the Enquirer is still predominately a conservative newspaper. This failing started long before the most recent changes and it starts with a lack of telling stories. They put up click bait 'articles' that are 500 words long and tell you nothing new or interesting, where River City News or Business Courier has 1000-1500 words with quotes from people, statistics, a slideshow and much more in depth story telling. I gave up on them a long time ago, and their constant war-mongering over the streetcar was the final nail in the coffin.

 

His comments about "Anyone pushing for the Streetcar deserved to be heard with both ears and a smile" is preposterous. What newspaper is he talking about? If the Enquirer has turned into that attitude I guess I wouldn't know anyway because it spent so many years doing the exact opposite that I already gave up on it. I think he is misdiagnosing the problem because of the timing of when he worked there. It was the time period before he got to the newspaper that they discredited themselves, and now they are apparently trying to right those wrongs by swinging too far in the opposite direction and hiring young people, liberals, and outsiders. The problem being that this is now ostracizing the only readers they had left; the anit-city, anti-streetcar folks.

Back in 2010-2011, The Enquirer printed an unbroken streak of 75~ anti-streetcar letters to the editor.  Then Barry Horstman completely mis-reported the 2011 TRAC meeting that stole $50 million from the project and blew it on two freight railroad grade separation projects in northern Ohio. 

Of course you want to have local experts reporting on local issues... but the idea that somebody who didn't grow up here is incapable of doing good, interesting, insightful reporting is a clear example of the parochial perspective that makes some people wary of outsiders and - in turn - makes it hard for outsiders to feel welcome.

 

I think there is also the loss of seasoned reporters and editors who knew the neighborhoods well. When you have so many new staff members come on board all at one time, it can resemble a startup with no sense of place. It's not uncommon to see readers point out flaws in practically every other article regarding location and detail.

I think there's some confusion on what the author is saying.  My impression is that he isn't saying that positive streetcar articles were the Enquirer's goal to get clicks, but any article about the streetcar.  The same with Steven Leeper with 3CDC.  I think the author is saying he was a real @#$@#$, but any article with him or 3CDC was guaranteed to get views.

I think there's some confusion on what the author is saying.  My impression is that he isn't saying that positive streetcar articles were the Enquirer's goal to get clicks, but any article about the streetcar.  The same with Steven Leeper with 3CDC.  I think the author is saying he was a real @#$@#$, but any article with him or 3CDC was guaranteed to get views.

 

You might be right. I had to read this about 5 times after you said it to see what you're saying. A journalist should be clearer in what he says.

 

Characters and businessmen like Mayor Cranley and Bob Castellini were to be viewed with suspicion if not disdain. Anyone pushing for the Streetcar deserved to be heard with both ears and a smile. Steve Leeper at 3CDC was Satan. But hey, use them all — if you tag big names in an article, it means pageviews.

 

But then again, right after this sentence (the very next one) he says:

 

The Enquirer paradigm was powerfully subliminal: the rich and powerful are, by nature, evil. The poor and minorities are, by nature, good. The Left is right, the Right are bigots, and the barometer of morality rests on the desk of the Editorial team.

 

Which leads me to believe he was talking about progressive vs. conservative views the whole time. Is this just a stream of consciousness rant?

You might be right. I had to read this about 5 times after you said it to see what you're saying. A journalist should be clearer in what he says.

 

I agree.  The author does use quite a bit of flowery language which I don't even think he uses properly.  He must think it makes him clever and quirky when it really just makes him incomprehensible.

You might be right. I had to read this about 5 times after you said it to see what you're saying. A journalist should be clearer in what he says.

 

I agree.  The author does use quite a bit of flowery language which I don't even think he uses properly.  He must think it makes him clever and quirky when it really just makes him incomprehensible.

 

 

A lot of Vox-type articles jerk the reader around from one sentence to the next.  When I was a teenager I remember first noticing that style of writing in Rolling Stone features, but they do essentially the same thing in hour-long Dateline and 20/20 features.  Basically they introduce a situation for the first 10 minutes, then take the reader (or viewer) through a roller coaster where the heroes and villains switch places a few times. 

 

 

https://medium.com/@dwhorn88/an-open-letter-to-the-guy-who-figured-out-whats-wrong-with-my-newspaper-ceeda98ea470#.l1p9o99lw

 

Response from Dan Horn at the Enquirer

 

Dear Ben Liebing,

 

Thank you for explaining in your recent essay why my friends and colleagues lost their jobs this week. It was enlightening to learn they had it coming.

 

I didn’t think you could bring so much insight to this painful time after working here for only a few months last year, but you nailed it. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s problem is not its failure to adequately adapt to a digital world in which advertising revenue continues to decline and readers balk at paying for the online product. No. The problem is the men and women who work here are a bunch of liberal, elitist carpetbaggers who’d rather sip lattes and wax poetic about their moral superiority than go out and cover a community they secretly despise. As you put it, “most of the real writers have quit or been fired.” Those left behind are ruled by “servile timidity,” “political correctness” and a desire to attack a city they deem racist and backward. So this latest round of layoffs is no big deal. Just more hacks getting sacked.

 

How did I not see this sooner? You clearly paid closer attention during those months you spent in journalism than I have in my 27 years.

 

 

Continued....

Fun (sarcastic) follow-up to the earlier post on Medium about what caused the layoffs at The Enquirer:

https://medium.com/@dwhorn88/an-open-letter-to-the-guy-who-figured-out-whats-wrong-with-my-newspaper-ceeda98ea470#.rkh6618t5

Beat ya by 5 seconds

You can get a year online subscription for less than a Chipotle Burrito.

You can get a year online subscription for less than a Chipotle Burrito.

 

When I was a paid subscriber, I was blocked from commenting on their articles.  Meanwhile fake facebook accounts that weren't subscribers were permitted to post. 

I'm sure it will be coming, but Cleveland.com has hired people/outsourced people to moderate ALL comments. The first step was to block commenting on all crime articles (happened sometime last year, I think) and now this.

It's simply a fact that The Enquirer's website is an absolute joke. 

Half the time the fake accounts trolling on the Enquirer's comment section are more interesting than the Enquirer's content.

Enquirer publishes an August 2016 syndicated column in its Jan 2, 2017 print edition:

 

^ That's pretty huge embarrassment. It must mean that no one even proofreads the paper before it gets sent out to print, and whoever is actually putting together the layout in InDesign or whatever they use is just mindlessly copy-pasting content. They need to get some quality control processes in place, nothing in a newspaper should ever be printed and on news stands without having even been read by someone working for said paper.

I just saw the term " South Hamilton Street" published in the Dispatch. Nobody who has been in Columbus more than 2 months would ever screw that up since there's many important businesses on Hamilton Rd.

I won't put links to them here but the Enquirer has been shilling for Cranley in their "Politics Extra" column recently. In one of them, they published the following:

 

“Maybe his opponents are nicer, but they’re no match for Cranley’s record.”

 

“Cranley is the only candidate in the race who has his own family, and the campaign wants to make that clear to voters.”

 

Ok, wow, so if the other candidates aren't married they don't have a "family"? Way to keep it 1950, Cincinnati.

^This is how Cranley is going to court all of the dumb old people.  Single adults without kids are weird and strange. 

The Enquirer rushed to publish a streetcar hit piece, claiming that it would run a deficit next year, then had to issue a correction when they realized that they did their math wrong...

 

We did the math on the streetcar budget

 

The Cincinnati Bell Connector won’t run at a deficit next year.

 

A budget request released earlier this week and reported on by The Enquirer was incomplete. It suggested funding woes, but a closer look shows that's not the case. [...]

 

The story published earlier this week, based on the limited amount of information available, said the streetcar budget is facing a nearly half-million dollar shortfall. That's not the case.

Their mea culpa could have struck a much more contrite headline....

EXCLUSIVE: Cincinnati Enquirer looking to sublease 75% of downtown office space

Jun 27, 2017, 2:32pm EDT

Tom Demeropolis

Senior Staff Reporter

Cincinnati Business Courier

 

 

Enquirer Media, publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper, is looking to sublease about three quarters of its downtown office space.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/06/27/exclusive-cincinnati-enquirer-looking-to-sublease.html