Enquirer Creates Click-Bait Blog Post a-la Buzzfeed

I don't think this will surprise anyone but the 24 people who commented on the blog post, but the Enquirer's blogpost over the weekend with the title Is Greater Cincinnati really miserable? is click-bait bullshit. The title implies the survey in question ranked cites (or maybe metro areas). In reality it "rated" States.

One can question the lousy article's methods and we should. The article, by Time but based on a Wall Street review of a Gallop Study (convoluted mess!) lists Ohio 5th and all of the stats it lists as examples don't rank in the top 5 worst. So, subjectivity or other randomness in the study of a study isn't valued, let alone trying to compares states on such a general basis.

The Enquirer's ICYMI blog then plays the role of Buzzfeed troll, looking to get hits (more page views) and it worked. Journalistic ethics be damned, however! Trying to push the city pride buttons by fraudulently including Cincinnati as the basis for a study is worthy of scorn and mocking. Getting readers falsely ginned up about something that does not reflect how the headline sold it is shameful and cruel.  If those responsible think they have any journalistic ethics, then they are greatly mistaken.

Speaking of Old Cincinnati: Peter Bronson is Writing Again

I'm not a regular reader of Cincy Magazine, but they appear to have brought in Peter Bronson, former columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, to write a hatchet job feature on new Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell.  In this article you get basically everything one expects from Peter Bronson, defend the police when they are Republican and/or Elder graduates, but attack them when they are Democrats.

When Bronson wrote for the Enquirer he was a shill for the Cincinnati police union and except when the FOP turned against John Kasich's union busting efforts, Bronson is back carrying their water.  I'd like to know how many of Bronson's sources are or have connections to the local candidates for CPD chief that didn't get the job.  I'm betting all of them.

WVXU Changes: Cincinnati Edition Moves to 1PM; Here & Now 2-4

'The Story', the current 1 PM show on WVXU is ceasing production, so WVXU has announced that 'Cincinnati Edition' will move to 1 PM and the program 'Here & Now' will be added at 2 to 4 PM starting December 2. The Takeaway appears to be off the line up. During Thanksgiving week, multiple specials will air from 1 to 4, with 'Science Friday' airing as usual on Black Friday.

Farwell to Each Note Secure

Local music blog Each Note Secure is calling it quits after ten years. I say thanks to all of the writers, but give a big shout out to Joe Long. Thanks to you Joe for adding much to Cincinnati's music and blog scene. I hope you continue to contribute to both in some capacity in the future.

Is the Cincinnati Beacon Finally Dead?

If you head to the Cincinnati Beacon website (www.cincinnatibeacon.com) one finds nothing of the old website and instead a graphic for IIS7 (an "internet information services" entity) shows up.  I guess the Beacon is finally dead.

Political blogging is not an easy thing, no matter how many may think what I do is easy (or just drivel.) This blog has been rather un-prolific as of late.  I'm never going to return to daily blogging, but I plan on keeping this 11 going on 12 year endeavor going.

Enquirer Twitter 'Coverage' of Primary Night Reminded Me of People Magazine

I am really not sure if I can really say People Magazine or just use US Weekly or TMZ, but it was rather disappointing at times.

NCIS has been playing on TV at side of room at @RoxanneQualls HQ. #enquirervote
— Cindi Andrews (@cindiincincy) September 10, 2013

.@Johncranley Party chatter: Negative ad hurt @Qualls2013. @Cincienquirer #enquirervote
— Sherry Coolidge (@SharonCoolidge) September 10, 2013

I didn't now TV shows and 'Party Chatter' were things to point out from a journalistic perspective, but if your target audience is an uninformed suburban housewife, then maybe it relevant.

Why Did the Enquirer ID the Student Who Attempted Suicide?

The choice to name the student who attempted suicide at LaSalle High School was the wrong one to make. I am trying to rack my brain to figure out the reasons for doing it. It's not information that is really going to drive readers to find out more by reading the paper. If they want to know about the case, adding the name isn't going to drive up circulation. I can see the argument that publishing all of the information known is good, but that assumes an extreme viewpoint where privacy is deemed wrong.

The technical reason I can see the Enquirer using is the strong likelihood that the student will be charged with a crime for bringing the gun to class and firing it, if nothing else. Naming suspects or potential suspects in crimes is an acceptable journalistic practice. Joe Deters likely won't let the case go anywhere, to help the school, if nothing else, but that's the type of story that could be written in a month or so once events play out. In that story that name of the student would then be far more relevant.

In this case at this time there is no good reason to name the student, who according to the article is under 18 years old. The young man's medical condition is not known. We don't know if he will even survive, let alone in what condition. Adding his name to the public sphere doesn't serve a purpose to the community. The Enquirer made a big mistake.

UPDATE #1: The Enquirer posted a response on why they named the student.  The response is lacking in my opinion.  It appears they did it for clarity because there was allegedly false information out there.  Also they did it because the name was already known, including allegedly being given to LaSalle parents by the School. It appears to me that not a whole lot of thought went into the act of publishing the name.  The Enquirer may want to rethink their policy and practices.  Hell, most of the time they don't report when suicide attempts happen, whether successful or not.

UPDATE #2: CityBeat has also named the student in a blog post today, based on the Enquirer article.

Hortsman's Bias Continues And Grows With Cranley's Help

It will come to a shock to no one that Enquirer Writer Barry Hortsman has written yet another hit piece on the Cincinnati Streetcar. What may be a surprise is how much this hit piece was free advertising for Mayoral candidate John Cranley.  Professional journalists and mainstream media outlets, usually don't do that.  That isn't the case for the Enqurier or Hortsman.

Hortsman couldn't bother to get a quote from the other candidate for office? Better yet, he could have written about the article about the Streetcar and not include Cranley at all.  It is called an "Exclusive" by the newspaper.  What that typically means is that the story is one on that media outlet has.  Instead, this article was exclusively filled with the political viewpoints of only one candidate for office, Cranley.  This no challenge to what Cranley says or believes.  His inclusion is irrelevant   This is supposed to be a transportation story, not a political story.

Pure Bias, terrible Journalism.

I honestly don't believe any article Hortsman writes at this point. After claiming to be able to walk as fast as the wind blows, he lost all credibility with anyone paying attention. Now, I would like to hear from any journalist explaining how this article is not an intentional endorsement of John Cranley.

I'd also will be checking the Cranley campaign finance reports for an in-kind contribution from Gannett for the publication of this article.

Enquirer Has Voter Protection Coverage

The Cincinnati Enquirer has several election day efforts to document voting issues in the Cincinnati area.  The main section is located here (behind the partial pay-wall), which includes interactive maps showing the precinct and issue identified.  Already there have been issues with cut/torn bar codes that caused issues with scanning and many reports of provisional voting requirements that were not expected by voters.

You can follow the voter protection efforts of the Enquirer on social media on Twitter and Facebook.

Is the Enquirer Delaying Print Stories From the Web, Again?

Since I ponied up and paid for an online subscription to the Enquirer, I thought I would read their front page headline on the print edition to see how they spun the news from last night.

What I saw to the left of the front page headline was another, smaller, front page story with the headline of "NAACP election will be battle." I read the article and thought, hmm, that would be a good story to link to on Cincinnati Blog.

That's basically how news blogging goes. You read other articles and link to them, adding your own take on the subject, often reacting to article itself.

So, I start to look for the article on the Enquirer website. There's not a Local News section.  That kinda sucks.  So I check around all the sections, including the Latest Headlines section, and  I can't find it. I do several searches for the article using the Enquirer's web search function. I can't find it. I go to Google and search on an exact sentence from the article including someone's name. I STILL can't find it. Maybe it was just a hiccup with their new paywall system, I don't know, but I like to find things I know are supposed to exist when I search for them.

So I gave up looking and had a different blog post than I was planning on writing.

Has the Enquirer gone back to a "print only exclusive" model?  Has it had that for a while and as a web only reader I am just now seeing the delay?  That's possible.  I kind of would have thought that such a delay would GO AWAY with the advent of an online subscription model, but maybe not.

It is still early in the morning and the article may pop up before I publish this post, but I was annoyed, therefore I am writing about it.  That's another way blogging happens, you get pissed off about something, so you blog about it.  Kinda simple, but it works for me.

Where Will You Get Your Cincinnati News?

With the the Cincinnati Enquirer going to a Paywall format tonight, where will you get your Cincinnati News? Will you subscribe? Will other local outlets expand coverage? There are no other mainstream outlets that have any stories that are as in depth as a daily newspaper goes. Will the TV stations improve their online articles to compete?

I fear few will notice.

The problem is that the public, overall, is filled with ignorant sloths, who care more about sports or Dancing with the Stars, than what happens in their community. They wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference if you moved them from West Chester to Dublin, OH, while they slept.

The BBC Visits Cincinnati

The BBC's World Update came to Cincinnati today to do a story on Ohio and surrounding states as they relate to the Presidential Race. They did the show from the WVXU studio and guests included WVXU political reporter Howard Wilkinson.

MetroMix Print Edition to End with September 19th Issue

Just in time for launch of the Enquirer's NYT style Paywall for it's online content, the FREE weekly entertainment newspaper MetroMix is ending its print edition with the September 19th issue. It will instead be online and incorporated in a new redesigned website. Here is how the Enquirer article describes it:

We’re currently hard at work relaunching Cincinnati.com’s Entertainment channel – consider this the Extreme Makeover: Entertainment Edition. We’re going to combine all of our entertainment coverage into one easy-to-navigate web site.

I'm not sure how this will impact Cincinnati's entertainment industry, but I do know that it lessons the impact of having a cover story. The one thing a digital edition or website has difficulty doing is creating the impact on the reader, or casual passer by, that a cover story provides. This effect is similar to a front page headline on a daily newspaper, but for weekly or monthly publications, the cover takes on a different focus.

MetroMix provides a boost to certain events by running a cover story on it. I don't see the impact with anything that could be created online or in an email. The medium doesn't have the same type of interaction with readers. This is a loss. I don't know if will or can be replaced.

Enquirer Blog Falls into False Equivalency Trap

I know journalists often look at the political world and try to find two equally opposing viewpoints to compare and then pretend to be objective. That type of action is a false equivalency, see a description of what that is here. The problem is that most of the time, the viewpoints are not equal, they are not the same.

Take yesterday's Enquirer political blog story: Mixing food with politics: What do you think?. The blog post, wrapped around an online poll, tries to marry two topics together: 1) those boycotting Chick-Fil-A for providing financial support to anti-gay groups and 2) The mythical hoards of people who might no longer want to go the Montgomery Inn because the owners took a public political opinion in the Presidential race. The two don't equate. For many reasons:

1. One is real, the other is speculation.
2. One is a national effort and one is a mythical-hypothetical local situation.
3. One is about bigotry and the other is about political opinion.

Number three above is key.  The boycott of Chick-Fil-A, which I participate in, is about the financial support Chick-Fil-A gives to groups like the CCV, the Cincinnati area's own anti-gay bigoted hate group.  This is being treated as a political issue by many conservatives, not a moral issue, and that is the clear false equivalency being allowed to fester by the media.

If a national fast food chain were to sponsor a golf tournament for a white supremacist group, would anyone try to compare a boycott of that fast food chain to what the Montgomery is doing?  No, the media would instead help expose the fast food chain's actions.

Gay rights are civil rights and the CINCINNATI media needs to understand that issue better and more importantly get on the moral side of it.  If too many of your readers are anti-gay bigots, tough shit, be journalists, don't be accomplices in the oppression of gays and lesbians.

We have bigotry in this community happening out in the open and our media far too often lets is slide unnoticed, or in the case of the Enquirer, lets it slide all the time.

The other bad part of the article was that it was talking about an event supposed to take place yesterday where the Republican Governor of Oklahoma was coming to appear with one of the Owners of the Montgomery Inn at their Boathouse location on the river.  This event was a Mitt Romney "We Did Build This” campaign event pushing a lie about the President that falsely claims the President said that small business owners don't build their businesses alone, the government helps. That's not what the president said, but it is the story line that should have been asked of the Governor and the owners of the Montgomery Inn. They should have been asked: Who owns the building where the Boathouse Location resides? The answer is the City of Cincinnati, or as the website says "Cincinnati City Of." I don't think that question was asked, nor asked how much help the people of the City were back in the late 1980's to the suburban based company.  I am just wondering how much hypocrisy you get with a full slab of ribs?

So the Enquirer missed the real story and tried to create one that just wasn't true. Bad day for Journalism.

Enquirer's Bellwethers Blog Series Demonstrates Public's Ignorance

The overall point I find hovering over nearly all of the stops the Enquirer's Jane Prendergast makes on her Bellwethers tour of Ohio is that people are vastly ignorant of political issues. Just because they have an opinion, doesn't mean it is an informed opinion. What is demonstrated most is that people can only understand what they see 5 feet in front of of them. That's an over the top metaphor, but on track. Most of the people interviewed seem to exist only in the limited experiences of their lives. They are cut off from the wider parts of the State, let alone the country or the world.

Some talk about not understanding something because they don't "know" anyone who fit into a specific situation.  I am guessing they don't have many friends or live in such an isolated or homogenized community that they are just ignorant.

One lady is so ignorant (or worse) that she still believes the President was not born in the United States.  I am guessing she is not delusional.  If I assume that and I assume that type of belief is not code for racism, then I would presume she doesn't consume enough or accurate news sources.  Anyone left believing the President was not born in Hawaii is either delusional, extremely ignorant, a racist (therefore also delusional) or playing around for affect.

I realize the blog posts are limited glimpses of each person interviewed and don't provide larger transcripts of the conversation, but I am trust the reporter's ability to provide an accurate interpretation of the interaction.  I hope the thing that the reporter, Jane Prendergast, takes back to her editors is that the news media needs to do a better job of educating the public.  It is no longer good enough to report that people have two opinions on the location of the President's birth.  Journalism must present the facts and keep reporting the facts, no matter how many crackpots creep out with promises of controversy and an increased audience.


We need journalism to do better to educate the public on facts and stop pretending there is always a debate on the facts.  Often there is a disagreement on the facts of a situation, like the horse race of an election or what the best policy should be.  The existence of a disagreement does not warrant underplaying facts.  Water is wet, the earth is not flat, Elvis is dead, and you can't dance on the head of a pin.  Journalists don't even alluded to those being false.  If you read a story where a debate on a fact like that is even mentioned, then that story was not written by a journalist.


It takes judgement on defining those facts.  But that judgement is based on evidence, not popular vote.  The public is filled with too much ignorance and reporting the ignorance with equal standing as the fact just makes the public more ignorant.


Yes, I watched The Newsroom's latest episode. I wish all Journalists watched it, but also lived it.

Why is the Enquirer Mixing a Murder in North OTR with Development Efforts?

The Enquirer's article online about the tragic murder of a 15 year old girl fails to be nothing more than pointless quotes cobbled together and a transparent ploy to gain attention. The first problem was the sensationalism, with two headlines: one on the article itself:

Girl's blood marks Over-the-Rhine dividing line

the other on the front page preview:

Girl's death a 'black eye' on OTR

The thought of trying to link violence with the neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine (OTR) is not a new thing, obviously, in Cincinnati. OTR still brings up the idea of violence and crime to the average suburban/exurban resident of the metro area who have been here for at least 10 years. Today, that crime and violence has decreased at a massive rate. This has helped changed the image of OTR. We (I live in OTR) don't have the automatic fear factor present itself, as often, when we mention OTR in conversation, except by the most anti-urban conservatives around town.  This link, however, sells newspapers.  The Enquirer makes money selling papers to people who have lived in Cincinnati for all of their life and their ignorance doesn't like to be challenged, so the newspaper feeds that ignorance with the same old story: crime happens where it is supposed to happen. To the ignorant person that place is OTR.  Selling it with emotional tugs is just the means.  If you can get quotes that bash 3CDC and the development in OTR, then that just appeals to a newer potential Enquirer Reader that wants their ignorance fed.  That group tends to be one left, as opposed to the right wing anti-urban knuckle-scraper.

What is the more disappointing problem with the story is it's structure.  What I get from it is that the reporter walked down Vine Street over a half mile from the murder scene and talked with some of the businesses in the newly developed area (right where I live). The article added pleasant quotes from employees at a couple of the businesses. He then walked West towards Washington Park in the quasi-narrative and invoked quotes from the usual suspects that were not really relevant to the point of the article, which was talking about the divide of the neighborhood, or was it the violence, or was it the drop in crime, or was it the resilience of the new residents?

If the article was going to be about something, it needed to be one of three things. First: Tell the story of the crime and/or the victim.  We got little about who she was, why was she there, what happened. Second: Talk about the situation of the Street Violence that affects many neighborhoods in Cincinnati.  Was this a stray bullet from a drug deal gone bad?  What she standing next to people who are involved in the drug trade?  Was this just an accident of some foolish person handling a gun?  Third: Tell of the divide between Northern OTR and the development South of Liberty.  This would surely have been most of what Josh Spring would have talked about.  His quote was filled with a big lie, but that's another blog post. One of the three would have work as an article and been relevant.  Instead we get a mess.

This article had many contributors, so that likely added to the hodgepodge feel, but the lack of editing just beams like a beacon a top a tall radio tower. It is like there could have been three different stories written and either the reporters were not able or allowed to do enough reporting for those stories, or more likely the story was only given so many lines of space. It would seem to me that the Newspaper should stop structuring their articles for newspaper print and focus on writing for the web. On the web, there isn't much of a space limitation. Also, other than organizational limit, the number of articles shouldn't be an issue, so write three stories instead of one. Put the out of town copy editors and layout people to the test!

CityBeat News Editor Kevin Osborne No Longer Working for Alt Weekly

Based on this week's masthead and his Facebook Page, Kevin Osborne is no longer working for CityBeat. A request for comment on the reasons for Kevin leaving the paper from CityBeat has yet to be answered.

The long running Porkopolis news/political column, authored by Osborne, was missing from this week's edition of the newspaper. In its place is apparently "The Alternative" written by TT Stern-Enzi. The article implies that this is a reborn column or project for Stern-Enzi and I can only surmise that this is the replacement for Porkopolis.

CityBeat was sold back in March to SouthComm of Nashville, Tennessee. Earlier this year significant staffing changes where made at the paper, including a new Managing editor.

I will update this story if new information arises.

WLWT Has a Slide Show of People Arrested and Not Yet Convicted

WLWT has a slideshow on its website which is titled See Who Got Arrested - Photos: This consists of a slideshow, like you might see on the Enquirer's Metromix, with a caption listing the crime for which they were arrested. They've only been arrested, not convicted, and they have their pictures up. Most of the crimes are more serious crimes (murder, rape, assault) and a large number I've seen covered previously in the Enquirer with the same arrest photo.

I don't like this photo montage. I don't like it because it's tone is tabloid. It is like a raw dump of crime thrown on the floor for a rabid pack of viewers to consume. There's nothing unethical or knowingly false about what they reported, just how they are reporting it. If the television station wants to write a story about each person's alleged crime, many of which they have, then fine. Just throwing up a photo and adding a sentence below is not journalism and does a dis-service to the public.

What also is very disappointing is that this slideshow made editorial choices not based on a reasonable requirements of content, structure or relevance, but instead on marketing. This a group of people who got arrestest and that WLWT wanted to show in hopes of gaining a wider set of viewers looking for pictures to look at, not because they want to consume news. It is not even a full list of everyone arrested. The only definition listed of the group is this:

"WLWT.com posts some notable mugshots from across the Tri-State. An arrest does not mean anyone has been convicted of a crime."

Notable in this instance I believe means tawdry or what ever will get more eyeballs. Yes, I'm helping get more eyeballs, however I will suggest to WLWT that if they are going to do a police blotter style story, do it right or just don't do it. We don't need the pictures. Yes, pictures get you more web hits, but it is not journalism, it is exploitation.

Enquirer Continues Anti-Urban Core Development Articles

I am just going to presume that the Enquirer is making a direct appeal to people in Price Hill, Madisonville, and Avondale to become subscribers by giving them lip service.  Here's the article on Price Hill, which is part two from Sunday's Fairmont Story and part three about Madisonville and Avaondale.  A simple fact brings out the underlying anti-ubran core development when these two sections appear in the articles. First from Part Two:

She and others are upset because they see massive development projects reshaping Downtown and Over-the-Rhine, while boarded windows and substandard rental housing spread in Price Hill. They want more help.

Here's the repeating of the dogma in Part Three:

As city leaders focus millions of dollars into remaking downtown and Over-the-Rhine, Madisonville and Avondale are in a battle to rebuild their aging communities.

Add these passages to this one from Part One and you get a Enquirer created narrative:

She and others are quick to point out that their neighborhoods have continued to decline even as tens of millions of dollars has poured into new housing and infrastructure in Over-the-Rhine, Downtown and the Uptown area.

What better way to create conflict than to fabricate it? The Enquirer is doing it all in the hopes of boosting circulation in these neighborhoods.  So is the Enquirer treating all of the communities it serves equally?  I think not.

This series is not news nor analysis, the Enquirer is pushing an underdog story and painting Over-the-Rhine, Downtown, and to a degree Uptown as the villains of a fable they are trying to construct. This is tabloid journalism in sheep's clothing. They have taken an editorial point of view and gone out and found people to fit their narrative.  This will get the Price Hill/Westwood/Suburban anti-city crowd in a frenzy, a market they want to reach, on an emotional level.

The odd element of part two of the series on Price Hill was how the black/white elements were discussed. The problem of white-flight was mentioned indirectly, but not as part of the narrative.  It can't be denied, but isn't the conflict that the newspaper is trying to exploit.

Howard Wilkinson to Retire From the Enquirer

CityBeat is reporting that long time political reporter Howard Wilkinson is retiring from the Cincinnati Enquirer.  Gannett, the Enquirer parent company, has offered early retirement buyout packages to qualifying employees.

Wilkinson has been a bedrock of political reporting in Cincinnati as long as I have been in town.  He's an excellent journalist and provided great reporting and analysis of political races over the years that will be impossible to replace, as will the other 18 possible buyout options pending in the newsroom.

This is yet another loss at the Enquirer that I don't see how the paper can recover.  They are losing so much city political knowledge.  One of the keys to a great reporter is to know the history of the subject they are covering.  Wilkinson has that.  At this point, no one has that at the Enquirer in the area of politics the way Howard does.  This I believe is one reason that the political reporting ends up being nothing but giving crazy nut jobs a platform to spout anti-city issues.  Wilkinson wasn't a sucker.  He didn't give COAST or Smitherman and their ilk reams of free press.  This is a massive loss for the Enquirer.

If will be a gain for someone.  Howard needs to continue to write.  He should blog.  If he is staying in town, he is more than welcome to blog here at Cincinnati Blog.  He certainly will have better spelling and grammar than I do.