The YP Place to Be in Ohio?

Cincinnati made the top half of 40 of the Forbes Magazine's Best Cities for Young Professionals. I've not read the Forbes article to judge how this ranking was conducted or how we compared in the past on similar type rankings, but the fact we are tops in Ohio and pretty high in the Midwest is good news.

Waiting for the Bus

Council voted to turn down the bus fare increase.

It lost 5-4, but it wasn't a usual suspects split. Anyone know the vote breakdown?

UrbanCincy has more.

Population Debate

The numbers are in and the City of Cincinnati is growing slowly. Slow growth is better than any loss, so we'll take this as a positive. Hamilton County lost 22,677 people last year, so what gives? What is driving people out of places like Reading, Silverton, and Cheviot? Are those communities starting to be too small and have aged facilities unable to keep up with their residents? Is it time for some of them to be annexed by the city? That is an option, but I don't know if it would be a good one for the City or not.

Any info on what is going on with Norwood?

Saving Newspapers?

Gannet and Enquirer seem to believe that the answer to saving newspapers is by getting readers to contribute the content. Well, sure, if you don't have to pay to gather content, you can surely make money. The problem is that you cease being a news outlet and become more of a vanity publication, where readers go to read their own work.

The problem I see with all local mainstream news outlets is that they are no longer in the business of gathering news. They thrive on channeling press releases, but don't put enough resources into shoe leather. If you are going to be a news outlet, you must get original and independent news.

What I hear the Enquirer saying is that they are out to create a flashy message board. I don't mind message boards. This blog is a form of a message board. Message Boards are not credible news outlets.

Tavern Wench Concert Review

JenJen at Tavern Wench reviews the Ben Folds/John Mayer concert.

Hmmmmmmm

I am sorry I missed this ENJOY THE ARTS event at the CAC. What is funny is that if you read the article you would think the YP Kitchen Cabinet had something to do with the event. I wonder how many volunteers that organization provided. I know ENJOY THE ARTS had a full team there working very hard.

Bad City Beat, Bad

I am guessing the editor-in-chief of CityBeat was on vacation last week. I say that because I would think he might have wanted this puff piece written by someone else, or maybe not even written at all. The News Editor at the weekly, Greg Flannery, was the author and the article was a straight-laced form of Journalistic fellatio that Peter Bronson would be proud of. Sure, Greg pointed out the facts about the subject of the article (over 98% of primary voters voted against him for mayor, for example), but he didn't hide his school girl affection and sounded like he was maneuvering to get his 98 Degrees lunchbox autographed.

When you thought it couldn't be worse, Greg writes on his blog about his admiration for Justin Jeffre, the subject of last week's cover story, specially about what Jeffre did during a protest Greg personally took part in. It was bad enough when Greg got into the business of creating news with his protests, instead of covering it, but here he his doing favors for his friends, throwing journalistic integrity out with the trash.