Monday, July 31, 2006
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
 What’s going on with The Enquirer’s writing staff? Are they firing quality reporters in exchange for a non-professional work-flow between the editors and motivated readers? On the one hand, it may feel empowering to allow citizens the ability to submit news to a major daily—but upon further inspection does the process hold?
According to an anonymous source who claims to work for the Enquirer, since Tom Callinan has become the Editor, the paper has lost many positions, including investigative reporting, computer-assisted reporting, one of our two reporting spots in Columbus, all but “the most repellent” of the columnists, the minority affairs reporter, the movie critic, the music writer, the writing coach, two medical writers, the environment reporter, two business reporters, the photo director, one librarian, and several clerk jobs.
Quite a mouthful, huh?
Also look at the names of solid reporters who no longer grace the Enquirer’s writing staff: under Callinan, the Enquirer has lost Kevin Aldridge, Tom O’Neill, Steve Herppich, Michael Snyder, Larry Nager, John Byczkowski, Ken Alltucker, Robert Anglen, James Pilcher, Cindi Andrews, Christy Arnold, Maggie Downs, and Marla Rose.
Where is everybody going?
Our source also offers another insight into Enquirer employment: “Because we are so obsessed with central planning and filling in calendars months ahead of time, we predictably have front-page stories about veterans on Memorial Day, kids on the first day of school, and the standard fare of Oktoberfest, Chilifest, Paddlefest, Maifest, Clevesfest, Goettafest, Reds fans, Bengals fans, funerals of teenage car-wreck victims, people booking out of town on three-day weekends and so on. Fortunately, in between we can bank on stories about hot weather, cold weather, gas price bellyaching, electric bill bellyaching, suburban sprawl bellyaching, traffic bellyaching, school bullying bellyaching, flu vaccine availability bellyaching and other worn-out topics to eat up news holes.”
Meanwhile, The Enquirer acts like it wants the average reader to have a voice—creating direct marketing schemes disguised as advisory panels.
But the latest Enquirer scheme could be the most scandalous of all—particularly when considered in the context of the brain drain described above: a new ”Community Publishing” option currently online at nky.com—and slated to potentially be released in Cincinnati in the upcoming months.
The online interface has a pretty specific filter to categorize reader submissions to maximize efficiency for paper editors. (To see screenshots of this submission process without creating an account, visit our NKY Screenshot Gallery.)
Is this the paper’s strategy for not only saving money, but also for the ultimate dumbing down of our intellectual environment? What kind of profile does the Enquirer expect to attract with their “Get Published!” options? Do most readers have the same kind of time and access for quality investigative journalism? (And if a reader did manage to provide such a report, is there any guarantee it would be published?)
From the surface, it looks like The Enquirer is trying to decimate the ranks of quality writers, and boil down their local coverage to announcements and feel good puff-stories authored by our neighbors. What better way to make people feel empowered about their loss of quality information? Maybe we won’t get a complicated report about the abuse of Area TIFs versus Project TIFs in Cincinnati—and what that means for local residents—but in exchange people get the thrill of knowing the person whose name appears in a print. Or even (sakes alive!) being published themselves!
Vanity press, meet major daily paper; major daily, meet vanity press.
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