The Cincinnati Enquirer

• 1. Introduction

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  The Cincinnati Enquirer, a morning daily in Cincinnati, Ohio, once lost its offices to an exploding opera house. On the 22nd of March 1866, a gas leak caused Pike's Opera House to blow up. The blast destroyed the newspaper's offices next door. A competitor, the Cincinnati Daily Times, let the Enquirer use its presses, so the paper missed only one day of publication. The archives covering its first 25 years did not survive. That near-disaster is a fitting start for a paper that has been bought, sold, held in trust and even owned by its own workers. How did it outlast every local rival? Who really controlled it at each turn? And what did it cost the paper when its boldest reporting went wrong?

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• 2. Ink and Inheritance

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  Moses Dawson was editing a paper called the Phoenix as early as 1828, and that paper is the Enquirer's ancestor. It later became the Commercial Advertiser, and in 1838 it turned into the Cincinnati Advertiser and Journal. Then brothers John and Charles Brough bought it and renamed it the Daily Cincinnati Enquirer. By then it was considered the newspaper of record for the city.

  The first issue appeared on the 10th of April 1841 and ran only four pages. Its tone was as rough as its tiny, crowded type. The paper declared firm support for the Democratic Party, standing apart from three Whig papers and two nominally independent papers then in circulation. A weekly edition for regional farmers followed on the 14th of April. It ran until the 25th of November 1843, under the title The Cincinnati Weekly Enquirer.

  In November 1843 the daily merged with the Daily Morning Message and took the name Enquirer and Message. The Message name was dropped in January 1845. In May 1849 the paper became The Cincinnati Enquirer.

  James J. Faran took an interest in the paper in 1844. In 1848, brothers Washington McLean and S. B. Wiley McLean acquired a stake. Washington was a leading Copperhead, and his editorial policies led the United States government to suppress the paper during the Civil War. After the war he kept up an anti-Republican stance. In the 1860s he bought out Faran.

  Lafcadio Hearn, one of McLean's star writers, wrote for the paper from 1872 to 1875. James W. Faulkner served as political correspondent from 1887 until his death in 1923, covering the Ohio State Legislature and Statehouse. His column, the Faulkner Letter, was well known and often carried in regional newspapers.

  In 1872, Washington McLean sold half the paper to his son, John Roll McLean. John took full ownership in 1881 and held it until his death in 1916. He had little faith in his only child, Ned. So he put the Enquirer and another paper he owned, The Washington Post, into trust with the American Security and Trust Company of Washington, D.C. Ned broke the trust on the Post, which led to its bankruptcy and its sale to Eugene Meyer in 1933. The Enquirer stayed in trust until 1952, and its freedom would come through a surprising group of buyers.

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• 3. Headlines and Free Land

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  A 1912 college textbook on newspaper making singled out the Enquirer's headlines for praise. In the 1910s the paper was known for a style in which words or phrases cascaded down the page vertically, beginning with a single word in large type. The textbook called some of them "masterpieces replete with a majesty of diction that is most artistic". It added that few papers could imitate the style successfully. During the 1930s and 1940s, other newspapers still regarded the Enquirer as innovative and distinctive in its typography.

  In the 1920s, a one-year subscription to the daily came with an unusual prize. The paper offered a free plot of land near Loveland, Ohio, along the Little Miami River. Loveland Castle was built on two of those plots. The surrounding community is now known as Loveland Park.

  By the late 1940s, Enquirer sales had risen dramatically. It was Cincinnati's last remaining morning daily, and its Sunday morning monopoly helped drive the growth. Meanwhile the Cincinnati Post, and especially the Cincinnati Times-Star, faced a declining afternoon market. Those strong morning sales made the Enquirer a prize worth chasing.

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• 4. Staff Buy the Paper

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  In February 1952, the Cincinnati Times-Star offered the American Security and Trust Company $7.5 million for the Enquirer. The paper's 845 employees pooled their assets, formed a committee and obtained loans. They outbid the Times-Star with an offer of $7.6 million, using the Portsmouth Steel Company as their agent. The deal closed on the 6th of June 1952. In its first year under employee ownership, the paper reported net earnings of $349,421.

  On the 25th of November 1955, city editor John F. Cronin led a revolt against management. He was fired the following month. The employees lacked enough capital and managerial expertise, and they were beset by financial problems and internal strife. On the 26th of April 1956 they sold the paper to The E. W. Scripps Company, owner of the Cincinnati Post.

  Scripps paid $4,059,000 for a 36.5% controlling interest. That beat a bid of $2,380,051 from the Times-Star Company and an offer from Tribune Publishing of $15 per share, or $2,238,000. Two years later Scripps also acquired the Times-Star and merged it with the Post.

  The Scripps family now owned all of Cincinnati's dailies, along with WCPO-AM, WCPO-FM and WCPO-TV. The company ran the Enquirer at arm's length, even leaving the Scripps lighthouse logo off its nameplate. The United States Department of Justice still filed an antitrust suit against the company in 1964.

  In 1968, Scripps entered a consent decree to sell the Enquirer. On the 20th of February 1971 it went to American Financial Corporation, run by influential Cincinnati millionaire Carl Lindner Jr. In 1975 Lindner sold it to Combined Communications, a Phoenix-based company of his, for $30 million. The price also included 500,000 shares of common stock and 750,000 common stock warrants. Combined Communications merged with the Gannett Company in 1979. Gannett now held a paper whose managers had been quietly planning a pact with the rival Post.

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• 5. Endorsements and Editorials

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  When Abraham Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864, the Enquirer opposed him. Its coverage of his second inauguration was scathing. The paper wrote, "Mr. Lincoln commences today, a second term unfettered by constitutional restraint as if he were the Czar of Russia or the Sultan of Turkey."

  In later years the Enquirer was regarded as conservative and Republican-leaning, in contrast to the Cincinnati Post, a former competing daily. From 1920 to 2012, its editorial board endorsed every Republican candidate for United States president.

  Politics ran through the newsroom's roster of alumni. James M. Cox appears among former contributors and is described as Governor of Ohio, a U.S. Representative and a presidential candidate. Harry M. Daugherty, a U.S. Attorney General, is listed beside him. Two former owners and publishers, James J. Faran and William J. Keating, also served as U.S. Representatives.

  The current editorial board says it takes a pragmatic stance. Then-editor Peter Bhatia described it this way: "It is made up of pragmatic, solution-driven members who, frankly, don't have much use for extreme ideologies from the right or the left." He added, "The board's mantra in our editorials has been about problem-solving and improving the quality of life for everyone in greater Cincinnati."

  On the 24th of September 2016, the Enquirer endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. It was the paper's first endorsement of a Democrat for the office since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

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• 6. Two Papers, One Press

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  On the 22nd of September 1977, the Enquirer signed a joint operating agreement with the Cincinnati Post. For two years the Enquirer had negotiated the terms in secret while securing concessions from labor unions. The two papers asked the Justice Department for an antitrust exemption under the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970.

  This was only the second such application under the act. The first involved the Anchorage Daily News and the Anchorage Times. It was approved summarily, yet it was already seen as a failure.

  The Justice Department approved the Enquirer and Post agreement on the 26th of November 1979, after negotiations and legal battles with unions. As the more financially sound paper, the Enquirer received an 80% stake in the business. It handled all business functions for both papers, including printing, distribution and advertising sales. Gannett opened a new printing press off Western Avenue in the West End to print both.

  In January 2004, the Enquirer told the Post it intended to let the agreement expire. The Post published its final print edition when the agreement ended on the 31st of December 2007. That left the Enquirer as the only daily newspaper in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

  The Enquirer then went after the Kentucky Post's former readers. One small sign was its wording. It began calling the area "Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky" rather than simply "Greater Cincinnati." Today only the Journal-News, a daily in the northern suburbs, still competes with it.

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• 7. Investigations and Prizes

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  In August 1980, William J. Keating appointed George Blake as the first new Enquirer editor since the Gannett acquisition. Blake had previously edited The News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida. His habit of delegating contrasted with the hands-on style of his predecessor, Luke Feck. Under Blake the paper gained a reputation for friendliness to corporate interests. Its coverage was weak when the savings and loan crisis engulfed financier Charles Keating, brother of publisher William J. Keating.

  The approach changed dramatically in January 1993. Harry Whipple arrived as president and publisher, and Lawrence Beaupre as editor, both from Gannett Suburban Newspapers in White Plains, New York. Beaupre stressed investigative reporting, starting with aggressive coverage of Charles Keating's conviction. By 1995 he had brought over his team of investigators from White Plains. The paper won awards for Michael Gallagher's 1996 investigation into Fluor Daniel's cleanup of the uranium processing plant at Fernald Feed Materials Production Center.

  On the 3rd of May 1998, the Enquirer published an 18-page special section titled "Chiquita Secrets Revealed." It accused the Cincinnati-based fruit company of labor abuses, polluting, bribery and other misdeeds. Chiquita, owned by former Enquirer owner Lindner, denied every allegation.

  Then the reporting unraveled. Gallagher was charged and convicted for illegally obtaining some of the evidence by hacking voicemail. The Enquirer fired him for lying about his sources. Facing a possible lawsuit, the paper settled with Chiquita out of court and paid the company $14 million.

  The settlement terms were unprecedented. The Enquirer ran a three-day retraction of the entire series on its front page. It destroyed any evidence it had gathered against Chiquita, and it transferred Beaupre to Gannett headquarters. The paper largely returned to its former approach to business coverage.

  The paper's first Pulitzer Prize came in 1991, for the editorial cartoons of Jim Borgman. Its second came in 2018. Under Bhatia, the Enquirer had become the first newsroom in the nation to assign a reporter to the heroin epidemic full time. That reporter, Terry DeMio, and reporter Dan Horn helped lead a staff of about 60 journalists on a project called "Seven Days of Heroin."

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• 8. Print and Pixels

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  On the 10th of April 2000, the Enquirer and the Post shrank from broadsheet to a narrower format similar to the Berliner style. They also began printing in color every day of the week. Gannett promoted the new size as easier to handle, hold and read, but it also cited lower newsprint costs.

  In May 2003, Gannett replaced Harry Whipple with Margaret E. Buchanan, a Cincinnati native who had been publisher of the Idaho Statesman. She was the newspaper's first woman publisher. Tom Callinan became editor the same year. He first tried to address falling circulation with lifestyle features for younger readers. That approach alienated the older core audience, so the paper put national news back in the spotlight. It also created niche, crowdsourced online products for younger readers.

  In October 2003, the Enquirer began distributing CiN Weekly, a free lifestyle magazine aimed at younger readers. It was meant to compete with Cincinnati CityBeat. In November 2004, Gannett bought HomeTown Communications Network, publisher of a daily newspaper and 62 weekly and biweekly papers. They were branded The Community Press in Ohio and The Community Recorder in Kentucky. The Department of Justice cleared the purchase the following March.

  The paper's first website, Enquirer.com, launched on the 1st of November 1996. It debuted alongside the Post's site, @The Post, and a shared site called GoCincinnati! displayed classified advertising and sold dial-up internet access. On the 1st of November 1998, the papers moved to a more memorable address, Cincinnati.com. The new brand covered about 300 local commercial sites and some community organizations.

  In October 2005, the Enquirer launched NKY.com for Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties in Northern Kentucky. It was one of the first newspaper sites to rely heavily on reader-created material, displayed on 38 community pages. In August 2006, Cincinnati.com added 186 community pages covering towns and neighborhoods in Ohio and Indiana. Reader stories from those pages appear in Your Hometown Enquirer inserts. In October 2012, the site went behind a metered paywall that lets readers view 10 stories a month before paying.

  From 1977 to 2013, the Enquirer was printed on a 130,000-square-foot press off Western Avenue in the West End. In March 2013, Gannett closed that plant and hired The Columbus Dispatch in Columbus to print the paper. The Enquirer soon moved to a smaller compact tabloid format. On the 5th of March 2022, it moved to a six-day printing schedule and ended its printed Saturday edition.

  Since September 2015, the Enquirer has teamed up with local Fox affiliate WXIX-TV to gather news and share coverage and video. In 2016 it launched a true crime podcast called Accused, which reached the top of iTunes' podcasts chart.

  In 2023, the paper's photographic archive was donated to the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. It covers the years 1945 to 1995.

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