The Cincinnati Enquirer

For other uses, see Enquirer (disambiguation).

Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Gannett Company
Publisher	Margaret Buchanan
Editor	Carolyn Washburn
Founded	1840
Headquarters	312 Elm Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202  United States
Circulation	206,320 Daily 290,500 Sundays[1]
OCLC number	51645694
Official website	cincinnati.com

The Cincinnati Enquirer, a daily morning newspaper, is the highest-circulation print publication in Greater Cincinnati (Ohio) and Northern Kentucky. (The Enquirer publishes a Northern Kentucky edition under the title The Kentucky Enquirer with a front section and remade Local section. The front page is remade from the Ohio edition, although it may contain similar elements.) A Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper, The Enquirer had a joint operating agreement (JOA) with the afternoon daily, The Cincinnati Post, and handled all of the business functions of both newspapers. Gannett Co. Inc. notified E. W. Scripps Company, publisher of The Post, in 2004 that they will not renew the JOA again. The Post ceased publishing on December 31, 2007.

The Enquirer publishes a variety of print and electronic media, including separate editions for Ohio and Kentucky, 17 Community Press weekly newspapers, 10 Community Recorder weekly newspapers, Design Magazine, Inspire Magazine, OurTown magazine, the Cincinnati.Com network of Web sites, and free-distribution advertising publications in the employment, automotive, real estate, rental, health care and shopping segments. Cincinnati.Com is The Enquirer's flagship electronic product, and encompasses 50 local and national information and advertising Web products.

The first known reference to Chicago as "The Windy City" appeared in the Enquirer May 9, 1876.^{[citation needed]}

Early history

The Enquirer was first published April 10, 1841. The Enquirer became one of the first newspapers in the United States to publish a Sunday edition beginning on April 20, 1848. In at least the decade of the 1850s, The Enquirer also published a weekly digest edition for regional farmers. From before the Civil War to 1881, The Enquirer was owned by Washington McLean, a Copperhead whose editorial policies led to the suppression of the paper by the United States government during the Civil War. After the war, McLean pursued an anti-Republican stance. One of his star writers was Lafcadio Hearn, who wrote for the paper from 1872 to 1875. James W. Faulkner started was a newspaperman from the Enquirer who became the political correspondent for the paper covering the Ohio State Legislature and Statehouse from 1887 until his death. The Faulkner Letter was a well-known column often carried in regional newspapers. From 1881 to his death in 1916, it was run by his son, John Roll McLean. Having little faith in his only child, Ned, John Roll McLean put the Enquirer and another paper he owned, The Washington Post, in trust with a Washington, D.C. bank as trustee. Ned successfully broke the trust regarding The Post, an action that led to its bankruptcy and eventual sale to Eugene Meyer in 1933. The Enquirer, however, continued to be held in trust until 1952.

Cincinnati Enquirer headquarters building at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.

During the 1930s and 1940s The Enquirer was widely regarded among newspapers for its innovative and distinctive typography.

In 1952, the bank decided to sell to Charles Phelps Taft, the owner of the Cincinnati Times-Star and a member of the presidential Taft family, but the employees of the paper pooled their assets and obtained loans to outbid him. However, they lacked sufficient capital and managerial expertise to run the paper. Beset by financial problems and internal strife, the paper was sold to The E. W. Scripps Company in 1956, the owner of The Cincinnati Post. Scripps held the paper until 1968 when it was forced to sell after the government successfully brought an anti-trust action. American Financial, a company controlled by Cincinnati millionaire Carl Lindner bought the paper, selling it to another Lindner company, Combined Communications, in 1969. Combined Communications, based in Phoenix, merged with Gannett in 1979.

In 1977, the paper entered into a joint operating agreement with the other daily in Cincinnati, the afternoon Cincinnati Post. Under the agreement, The Enquirer handled all business functions of both papers, including printing, distribution, and selling advertising. In January 2004, The Enquirer informed the Post it would not be renewing the agreement upon its expiration December 31, 2007. This led to the closure of the Post, which left The Enquirer as the only daily newspaper in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, a region that is home to more than 30 local weekly newspapers and several magazines and tabloids.

Offices

Main article: Cincinnati Enquirer Building

Beginning in 1866, The Enquirer was published from offices in the 600 block of Vine Street in downtown Cincinnati. Beginning in 1916, the newspaper constructed a new headquarters and printing plant on this property; its final details were finished in 1928.^[2] The newspaper moved to its present Elm Street headquarters in 1992.^[3]

Recent history

On November 1, 1996, The Enquirer initiated daily publication of a free Internet edition containing most of the local content produced by its reporters, photographers, and columnists. The Enquirer also launched GoCinci.Net, an Internet Service Provider and free World Wide Web site that presented content from The Enquirer and the Post. In August 1998, The Enquirer renamed its Web site Cincinnati.com. In May 2002, Cincinnati.com was expanded to represent local news competitor WCPO-TV, owned by the E.W. Scripps Company.

In May 2003, Gannett Co. replaced Harry Whipple, who had been president and publisher for 11 years. The new publisher, Margaret E. Buchanan, is a Cincinnati native who was previously publisher of the Idaho Statesman in Boise, Idaho. She is the newspaper's first woman publisher. Also in 2003, Tom Callinan, a veteran Gannett editor whose previous top positions included newspapers in Phoenix and Rochester, N.Y., became editor of the Enquirer.

In October 2003 The Enquirer began publishing and distributing CiN Weekly, a free lifestyle magazine aimed at younger readers.

In October 2005 The Enquirer launched NKY.com, a Web site covering news from the Northern Kentucky counties of Boone, Campbell and Kenton. This was one of the first newspaper-published Web sites to make extensive use of user-created content, featured prominently on its 38 community pages.

In April 2006, The Enquirer was cited by The Associated Press with the news cooperative's General Excellence Award, naming The Enquirer as the best major daily newspaper in Ohio. Earlier that year, parent Gannett Co. named The Enquirer the most improved of the more than 100 newspapers in the chain.

In August 2006, Cincinnati.Com launched 186 community pages for Ohio and Indiana towns and neighborhoods. Cincinnati.Com began soliciting and publishing stories and articles from the public. Readers-submitted content also is extensively featured in Your HomeTown Enquirer, six zoned twice-weekly local news sections published on Thursday and Saturday in Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties.

Bibliography

• Audit Bureau of Circulations. March 2005 Audit Report.
• Nicholas Bender. "Banana Report." Columbia Journalism Review. May/June 2001.
• Graydon Decamp. The Grand Old Lady of Vine Street. Cincinnati: The Cincinnati Enquirer, 1991. (Official history).
• Douglas Frantz. "After Apology, Issues Raised In Chiquita Articles Remain." The New York Times. July 17, 1998. p. A1, A14
• Douglas Frantz. "Mysteries Behind Story's Publication." The New York Times. July 17, 1998. p. A14.
• Lew Moores. "Media, Myself & I". Cincinnati CityBeat. January 7, 2004.
• Lew Moores. "The Day the Music Critic Died." Cincinnati CityBeat. February 11, 2004.
• Randolph Reddick. The Old Lady of Vine Street. Ohio University Ph. D. dissertation, 1991. (A study of the four years of employee ownership).
• Nicholas Stein. "Banana Peel." Columbia Journalism Review. September/October 1998.

References

1. ^ "2007 Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation" (PDF). BurrellesLuce. 2007-03-31. http://www.burrellesluce.com/top100/2007_Top_100List.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-29. 
2. ^ Owen, Lorrie K., ed. Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places. Vol. 1. St. Clair Shores: Somerset, 1999, 574.
3. ^ About Us, The Cincinnati Enquirer, 2008. Accessed 2010-12-03.

External links

• Cincinnati.Com (official site)
• Cincinnati.Com (official mobile site)
• (official iPhone site)
• NKY.com (official site)
• Enquirer.com (official site)
• Cinweekly.com (official site)
• Gannett Co. Inc. official site
• Gannett Co. Inc. profile of The Cincinnati Enquirer
• Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Newsdex (an index to historical newspapers in the Cincinnati area), http://newsdex.cincinnatilibrary.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/49.