Post to Close After 126 Years
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.
"It is always a difficult decision to cease publication of a newspaper, especially two with such fine traditions of journalistic excellence and community service as The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post," said Rich Boehne, chief
operating officer for Scripps and a former Post staff member. Since receiving
notification from Gannett that the joint operating agreement would not be
renewed, Boehne said Scripps had explored options for The Post's future. A
company official said those included continued publication, turning the paper
into a free distribution newspaper and even becoming an Internet-only news
site. However, because Scripps does not employ advertising and circulation
staffs or other production and business employees locally and does not own any newspaper printing facilities in Greater Cincinnati, continued publication
would have been too costly to pursue.
"After careful analysis and weighing several alternatives for the future of The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post, it's apparent to us that it would not be feasible to continue publishing the newspapers after the end of the joint operating agreement," Boehne said. "The investment that would be needed to continue publishing a daily newspaper that could successfully compete in a marketplace with so many media alternatives would be prohibitive."
Other options were ruled out for similar reasons - too great a start-up cost and giant and rapid shifts in media consumption.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.
"For decades I think the Post has served a very important role in providing news coverage for our entire region," said Steve Stevens, president of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. "I really think that the people of this region should count themselves quite lucky, in that a market this small has been able to support two daily newspapers (The Post and Enquirer) for that period of time. That's saying something when you can look back and say we were covered better than the majority of communities our size with these two papers."
Commenting on the Post and its impending closing, Stevens said
the community will lose an important editorial voice, as well, that has been
part of a dialogue that makes the community a better place.
"I think dialogue is always so important to us in terms of helping us solve problems and consider angles and solutions. Opinions are what we like to value. This chamber succeeds because we have the opinions of many members and also of many engaged people who are out there talking to us about the issues we ought to be talking about and working on," Stevens said. "The editorial voice in the newspaper is similar to that in terms of saying, 'Hey, community, wake up. We might be missing something here. Maybe we ought to be diving into this issue a little deeper or we're forgetting about these possibilities.'
"Ellen van der Horst, president of Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, said the closing of The Post will leave a void."The Cincinnati Post has enjoyed a grand
tradition of journalistic excellence, lively writing and brilliant photography,
and will be missed," said van der Horst. "Cincinnati without The Post on a week day or Saturday afternoon is like Cincinnati without its chili. The Post gave Cincinnati a flavor all its own, and its voice throughout the years has been critical in shaping our region's future."
A.J. Schaeffer, a lawyer and chairman of a group that is striving to implement the long-range plans for Northern Kentucky put forth by Vision 2015, the community-wide effort to set goals and map plans for the region's future, said he was saddened to hear of the demise of The Post.
"I have long admired The Post for its reporting and the integrity of the organization. They brought an important perspective to he community that I think will be missed here in Northern Kentucky," Schaeffer said.
Schaeffer said not only will the news coverage of the region be missed but also the separate editorial voice that the newspaper provided."It's an intimate connection to the community that The Post has that we will lose. That intimacy, that connectedness with folks on the ground throughout the community, is an important factor in the kind of reporting The Post has done over the years," he said. "It's been a hallmark."
The decision to cease publication of the newspaper was not a great surprise. The notification in 2004 by Gannett that it did not ntend to renew the 30-year joint operating agreement, continuing declines in circulation of most afternoon newspapers and the increased competitiveness of other media -- television, cable, radio, niche publications and the Internet -- conspired against a decision to continue publishing.
Paid circulation of The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post when the joint operating agreement was formed stood at about 188,000. By March 2007 --30 years later -- the combined circulation of the two newspapers stood at about 27,000, Monday through Friday, and 37,000 on Saturday. The afternoon editions of The Post newspapers reach only about 4 percent of the occupied households in Greater Cincinnati, down dramatically from their peak in the pre-television era, Scripps reported.
However, the circulation declines at The Kentucky Post were not as precipitous. The newspaper circulated more than 30,000 editions scarcely a decade ago and reached some 30 percent of households in some areas of Northern Kentucky."If The Post had a future, I always believed it
might be in Northern Kentucky," said Mike Philipps, who became editor of
both newspapers in 2001.
Still, the trends of declining circulation and changing reader habits continued to sap not just The Post but also most afternoon newspapers. At the end of 2006, there were 614 afternoon newspapers in the United States,
compared with 1,450 at the end of 1950.The joint operating agreement, allowed under the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, gave The Post newspapers a 30-year lease on life. This federal law grants limited anti-trust exemption -- essentially allowing partners to pool resources -- in the interest of preserving independent editorial voices in communities threatened with the financial failure of one or more of their newspapers. The agreement has been profitable for Scripps. The company takes in 20 percent to 25 percent of the earnings generated through the joint operating agreement. That amounted to $20.8 million in 2006, $23.5 million in 2005 and $23.1 million in 2004, according to the company. Out of those annual amounts, the company pays the expenses of operating the newspapers' newsroom. In 2005, the Cincinnati newspapers contributed $15.4 million in profit to Scripps after paying those expenses.
"There's been a lot of great journalism and service to this community since the joint operating agreement was signed," Scripps executive Boehne said," but those who created it 30 years ago understood the reality of the media marketplace. The fact is, throughout the duration of the agreement, media consumers in Greater Cincinnati have been increasingly choosing other alternatives for news and information over their afternoon newspapers."Scripps owns two of those alternative media in the region: WCPO-TV (Channel 9) and its Web site, WCPO.com.
"In many ways, our predecessors at Scripps had the foresight to
recognize early on that the habits of media consumers were changing in an
increasingly electronic age," Boehne said. "The wisdom of getting into broadcast television as it emerged 60 years ago is poignantly evident
given the trends that inevitably led to the difficult decision that we've been
forced to make today."During the years of the joint operating agreement,
The Post has continued to focus on local news and provide a clear editorial
voice on local issues."I've always thought of The Post as kind of a
surrogate town square, a place for readers to hang out and be informed and
entertained and frightened and fascinated all at the same time," said
Philipps.
"We've tried to have some fun, do a little bit of good and maybe
shed a bit of light in the dark corners here and there. But what we've tried to
be most of all is part of our community. And I like to think our community has
been a better place with The Post in it.
"Mark Contreras, senior vice president/newspapers for Scripps, praised Philipps and the newsroom staff of The Post for their commitment to journalistic excellence and for providing the newspapers' readers with a consistently solid daily news report despite the challenging circulation and readership trends.
"Mike Philipps and the entire staff of The Post are true professionals in every sense of the word," Contreras said. "They've never lost sight of the responsibility they have to their readers to publish a newspaper that's credible, highly informative and striving to make a difference in its community. The Post has accomplished much over the years, thanks to their efforts. I just
really want to take my hat off to both Mike and the entire staff for working
through the last couple of years in particular. It's not an easy set of
circumstances that you work with. I have never seen this kind of esprit de
corps with a staff that size in the circumstances that you are in in a
two-newspaper town," he said.
Post employees were informed of the decision at a staff meeting today in The Post newsroom and through phone calls from managers. The decision to cease publication of the newspapers will affect 52 full-time newsroom employees, who will be offered severance packages, including outplacement services and three months of paid medical benefits. Scripps took a $1.8 million pre-tax charge for the fourth quarter of 2003 to reflect the expected severance costs to Post employees in the event of closure of the newspapers at the end of 2007.
Scripps took steps to reduce the number of editorial employees at The Post newspapers from 84 in 2004 through attrition and a series of early retirement offers to eligible employees. The intent, according to the company, was to minimize the number of employees affected if closing the newspapers became necessary. Between now and the end of the year, there will be no changes in efforts by The Post to offer the best news coverage and insight into the communities the newspapers cover.
"We'll continue to go out and find the news just like we have for 126 years," said Philipps. "We still have an important role in the community. We still have acres of newsprint. We still have an aggressive staff."
(first published in The Cincinnati Post July 7, 2007)