Cincinnati Post On Its Deathbed: Still Kicking Enquirer's Keister

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The Society of Professional Journalists chapter based in Cincinnati just held its annual awards banquet to celebrate outstanding work by reporters and editors over the past year. And the Cincinnati Post, an E.W. Scripps afternoon daily that is scheduled to close its doors forever in December, clobbered its crosstown morning rival. The Post won 52 awards, including 16 firsts. The epitaph can read: Kicked the Enquirer's ass till the day we died.

Gannett Co. Inc.'s Cincinnati Enquirer managed to win just 31 awards. In other words, the Post is flat on its back, barely with a pulse, poised for certain doom. Yet, its death rattle is still a voice judged superior to that of the Enquirer, a larger paper with a stodgy reputation. The Enquirer's product may not be the best in the marketplace. But it does own the better time slot with AM delivery, a huge advantage. Afternoon newspapers such as the Post are nearly extinct in North America.

Here is the Post's list of winners And here is the Enquirer's list of winners. True to their rivalry, neither newspaper saw fit to mention the other's prize-winning work.

One final note: Powel Crosley Jr. and his brother, Lewis, were inducted into the Cincinnati Journalism Hall of Fame. The brothers started WLW-AM and largely invented broadcast journalism in 1922 when the station covered a fire on the Ohio riverfront and scooped the newspapers. That event instantly demonstrated both the potential and power of the new medium. The brothers were also pioneers in broadcasting baseball and did live play-by-play of the Reds. They gave the Voice of America its start during World War II.

The Crosley brothers are long gone from this world, but they might have noticed that the journalists who gathered in Cincinnati to hand out kudos paid no heed to the pioneering that is being done on the Internet via blogs, a form that is equally innovative and fresh as broadcasting in the 1920s. Rusty McClure, a descendant of the Crosley's who spoke at the banquet, said they "saw a change happening" and dived in as innovators.

"Radio journalism didn't exist back then. So they just made it up."

Few, if any, of the journalists in the room listening seem to have much interest in the new form. They don't appear willing to bring it to life, to attend and aid the birthing process, to just make it happen.

Some Advice To Newspaper Editors: Embrace Change (Quickly) Or Die

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Word is all over the continent that the San Francisco Chronicle is chronically ill and more gloomy news for the newspaper business is going to be coming from the city by the bay. So what should be done? Some are blaming journalism professors, and say the academics are way behind the news curve and haven't embraced blogging and bloggers, don't understand how to ride technology waves, and have been running mossback programs geared to a century (the 20th) that has passed. The contention is that today, everyone is a journalist.

There is probably more than a grain of truth to that. Does anybody know of a journalism prof in Ohio who regularly blogs on current events? Are they pushing editors to innovate, try creative forms, catch the wave? If it is happening in Ohio, I'm not aware of it. And the big metro dailies in Ohio are just as sick as those everywhere else. So why aren't the j-schools hotbeds of innovation and leadership for the industry? Why don't the profs support, nurture and roll out ideas? It happens in medicine. It happens in engineering. It happens in computer science. It happens in agriculture, where if you check the patents you can find Ohio scientists have developed new varieties of everthing from apples to elm trees to genetically engineered hogs.

From the bay area comes this missive -- wondering, too -- why the journalism schools are barren places when it comes to ideas for journalism reform. The solution offered: "Embrace and extend," watchwords in the tech business that have yet to find their way into newsrooms.

[UPDATE: PsychoBillyDemocrat has some wise additions, and considers the implications of further shrinkage in the newspaper business. Redhorse's bloodlines are in print, so take stock of his views.]