Farewell Cincinnati Post

After a century of operation, The Cincinnati Post will cease publishing on December 31st.

The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post - afternoon daily newspapers serving Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky for more than a century - will cease publication on Dec. 31, 2007, the newspaper's owners announced today.

The last edition of the newspapers, owned by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co., will be published on that Monday, New Year's Eve.

The decision by Scripps to cease publication comes three years after the company was notified by the Gannett Co., owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, that the 30-year contractual agreement under which the Enquirer handles business operations for The Post would not be renewed when it expired at the end of this year. Under that agreement, advertising and subscription sales, production and distribution were handled for The Post newspapers by the Enquirer, but the news operations and the editorial pages were separate and competed with each other.

This isn't an uncommon arrangement in a city that has two newspapers. In San Francisco, The Chronicle and Examiner share business operations. Until The Miami News folded in 1988, it along with The Miami Herald had similar arrangements.

Usually where there are two newspapers in a city, one publication dwarfs the other. It was that way in Miami, the Times was never a serious alternative to the Herald. A peculiarity of South Florida is, that in Southern Palm Beach County(Boca Raton and Delray Beach) you have three viable newspaper alternatives. The Sun-Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post and The Miami Herald. Or at least there used to be. I don't think the Herald has much of a presence in Palm Beach County anymore.

The decision brings to an end the two Post newspapers that carried the imprint of E.W. Scripps, who built a chain of papers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that comprised the heart of what today is a media enterprise with interests in national cable networks, newspaper publishing, broadcast television stations, interactive media and licensing and syndication.

It also brings to an end newspapers that were champions of civic reform and unafraid to take up a cause. The Cincinnati Post took the lead in ending the notorious Cox political machine that ran the city into the early part of the 20th century and championed the city manager form of government. The Kentucky Post backed reform movements that brought an end to Newport's "sin city" regime in the late 1950s and led an award-winning crusade to clean up the Licking River. Both newspapers have advanced the cause of education, with The Kentucky Post advocating for school reform and successfully campaigning for an overhaul of state laws that have made Kentucky a model for education reform throughout the nation.

Sadly a part of history will die with the Post's closing. Then the MSM is no different than any other business. If it can't be profitable, owners and investors will find better ways to spend their money.

Hat tip- Don Surber
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