Posted on 12/31/2007 6:52:28 AM PST by abb
In the newsroom of The Cincinnati Post, neither Champagne corks nor beer can tabs will be popping on Monday after the paper is put to bed — and not just because of a ban on alcohol that day.
The Dec. 31 issues of the paper and a companion title, The Kentucky Post, will be the last for both newspapers, which are part of a dying breed of afternoon dailies.
Fewer than 10 cities still have two or more daily newspapers, and Cincinnati was the last two-paper town in Ohio. The demise of The Post, which is 126 years old, leaves The Cincinnati Enquirer with far less competition.
For the last 20 years, The Post has operated under an arrangement with The Enquirer, a morning paper owned by Gannett, in which each maintains a separate and independent newsroom while The Enquirer handles advertising, circulation and printing for both. Three years ago, The Enquirer said it would not renew the agreement.
E. W. Scripps, which owns The Post, explored ways to continue publishing — as a free daily, as a Web site or with a new business partner — but decided in July to shut both the Cincinnati and Kentucky versions of the paper, which had suffered a combined circulation decline to 27,000 from a peak of 275,000 in 1961.
“The Post was locked into afternoon distribution and locked out of the Sunday field,” said Rich Boehne, chief operating officer of E. W. Scripps and a former Post business reporter. “It was set on a course where it was unable to make the strategic changes to survive.”
According to Scripps, there were 614 afternoon dailies in 2006, compared with more than 1,450 in 1950.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
At one point this would have been sad, but now for every newspaper that goes under, 20 websites replace them.
“Goodnight Chet...Goodnight Dave...”
roadkill
Well, maybe that's part of their problem.
When I was a kid in the 60’s my Dad would send me down to the store every afternoon to pick up the afternoon edition of the Boston Globe.”Make sure it says ‘closing stocks’ on it”,he’d say.Boston hasn’t had an afternoon paper in at least 30 years.
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071231/NEWS01/712310353
Monday, December 31, 2007
Last of the line
The staff that writes, photographs, designs and edits The Post’s final edition follows a storied tradition of talent that made the paper and the city proud.
By Lew Moores
Post contributor
The history of The Cincinnati Post and Kentucky Post in the last four decades has been something of an exquisite paradox - an afternoon newspaper that had managed to attract incredible talent and practice a scrappy brand of journalism over those years while staring inexorably into the face of declining revenues and, ultimately, business failure.
What had been thought to be inevitable - certainly in the past decade or so - becomes indisputable today as The Post will cease publication.
A consensus emerges among more than a few Post alumni - even in the last 30 years as it functioned under a Joint Operating Agreement with the Cincinnati Enquirer, The Post was a joyride filled with effervescent memories.
Many Post alumni have also found their way into careers outside journalism, contributing to the community in other ways.
The Post was where Ken Bunting, now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, practiced his incomparable brand of shoe-leather journalism. It was where Bob Mong, executive editor of the Dallas Morning News, was allowed to pursue hard-hitting, in-depth reporting. It was where Mike Blackman, who went on to become editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Polk Laffoon IV, who went on to a remarkable career with Knight Ridder newspapers, both set the standards here in the ‘70s for literary journalism.
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Bye bye. It was “The Post and Times Star” in my youth...
I live in Cincinnati and have never read the Post. I did not even know it was still in circulation. Sixty years ago, there were 13 newspapers in Cincinnati, four in German.
This is horrible! A ban on alcohol!
BTW- I usually stop by at their online site and read the sports almost daily. Today’s Lonnie Wheeler sports column starts thusly:
At the time of its first edition, which was 1881, the newspaper didn’t need sports, obviously. In Ohio’s largest city, there weren’t any to speak of. Basketball was 10 years shy of being invented. The local schools hadn’t yet connected education to football. And for the first (and still only) time since the National League was founded in
1876, Cincinnati was bereft of professional baseball.
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SPT
I still miss the Dallas Times Herald!
Still, I'm sorry to see it go. Perhaps Anschutz will add Cincinnati to his chain of Examiner newspapers.
Still, I'm sorry to see it go. Perhaps Anschutz will add Cincinnati to his chain of Examiner newspapers.
I always liked the post better. I will miss good coverage of KY high school sports.
I really wish you’d stop posting this garbage. It’s childish wishful thinking. It’s more influental and powerful than ever
Feel free to not click on these threads. There is not now and never has been any requirement that you click on, read or comment on the Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™ threads. Please accept my apology for not making that clear.
All you’re doing is showing joy at lost jobs
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