Cincinnati

The Phony Coney: Cincinnati second-largest American city with no rail transit

Only Detroit is larger and look where Detroit is.  But even they have one in the planning stages.

Perhaps a campaign of shame might get the public to reconsider light rail and street cars. 

I was reading the article Charging for Access to News Sites at DaringFireball.net and thought it applied to the Cincinnati Enquirer pretty well.

Old-school news companies aren’t like that — the editorial staff makes up only a fraction of the total head count at major newspaper and magazine companies. The question these companies should be asking is, “How do we keep reporting and publishing good content?” Instead, though, they’re asking “How do we keep making enough money to support our existing management and advertising divisions?” It’s dinosaurs and mammals.

And it’s not really surprising that they’re failing to evolve. The decision-makers — the executives sitting atop large non-editorial management bureaucracies — are exactly the people who need to go if newspapers are going to remain profitable.

From Cincinnati.com: A letter from the Publisher

The Cincinnati Enquirer has been around for 168 years – making it one of the oldest local institutions in Greater Cincinnati – and has survived 19 economic downturns, including the Great Depression. As the local economy recovers, we’ll be around to cover this story too.

Naysayers have predicted our demise many times over those years, but today The Enquirer reaches 64 percent of local adults every week, or 803,800. Enquirer Media does not have an audience problem. Nearly two-thirds of the market will read our newspaper this week. It’s the economy.

This is a nice piece of denial.  Hopefully, this is just their public face, that internally they truly realize the predicament they’re in.  Because blaming the economy and not recognizing the change in the way that the world gets its news is a bit delusional. 

The Enquirer says it reaches 803,800 people a week. But how many of them actually subscribe to the paper?  When was the last time you bought a paper?  If I had a bird or some kind of animal, I might by the paper, but otherwise I’d just read it online because by the time a newspaper is printed, it’s literally yesterday’s news. 

Obviously, there are no easy fixes as newspapers across the country are all dealing with the drop in paid subscribers and ad supported media.  It’s clear that readers of print media are decreasing and the advertising from the internet is not making up the difference.

Layoffs help the bottom line in the short term but doesn’t address the issues facing the paper and may cripple the paper as it tries to find relevance in the internet age.

So, what’s the Enquirer going to be?  Is it going to be a cobbled together collection of newswire stories?  The Cincinnati Enquirer should really be the preeminent source for Cincinnati news.  They should cover local issues exhaustively.  But, often when I want to find out what’s really going on in Cincinnati I often turn to various blogs for news and discussion.  For example, I’m interested in the re-development of Cincinnati and a site like Building Cincinnati has much more extensive information on the goings on in the city than the Enquirer.

Is it too late for the Enquirer?  Maybe. But, I still think there is an important place for traditional media.  The Enquirer still has access that bloggers can only dream about.  With professional reporters, writers, and editors the Enquirer can cover stories full time that most bloggers can not.  But who’s going to pay for the quality of professional reporting?  If ads aren’t enough to sustain the business what are the newspapers going to do?

If the Enquirer is going to make it, I believe that they need to focus on the quality of local reporting. Obsessively cover the important issues and find the unique stories in the city.  Unique and quality content is the key to good readership.  At least then the Enquirer might have a chance.

From Infrastructurist.com: Demolished! 11 Beautiful Train Stations That Fell To The Wrecking Ball

Be thankful that we still have the Union Terminal in Cincinnati.  This article is about 11 train stations that weren’t so lucky. 

Here’s a video of former mayor of Cincinnati Jerry Springer in the 70’s singing a song to save Union Terminal.

I crossed the river into Covington, KY for Maifest on Sunday. 

What is Maifest?  From the Covington, KY website:

“Maifest
is to celebrate the first spring wine, theoretically, and Oktoberfest
is in honor of the first Oktoberfest, which was King Ludwig’s wedding,
in the 1800s, in Bavaria. But for our purposes, they’re basically the
same.”

I didn’t see a lot of wine being served there, definitely not a wine festival.  It is pretty much as they say, Oktoberfest in Mai, or May as we like to call it.  But, it is a nice festival and it was a beautiful sunny day to walk around MainStrasse to people watch and to look at booths.  The vendor booths are interesting, but really, how many Redneck Windchimes does one need?

Surprisingly the MainStrasse area wasn’t too crowded Sunday afternoon and much of Main Street was pretty empty.  But, I love walking around there.  Main Street is so quaint, so much character, one of the nicer areas in greater Cincinnati.

We discovered that a new place called Europa is opening up on Main Street in a couple of weeks.  They were open, handing out free sample cones of their tasty Gelato.  In addition to Gelato, they’ll be serving High Tea and baked goods.  I spoke to the owner and she said that they’re planning to be open until 1AM on Friday and Saturday.  Sounds like a great place to pick up a late night snack.

Here are some photos that I took:

From TMZ.com: Broke-Ass Supervillain After Shadow Hare

An evil genius has placed a $10 bounty on the masked super-hero roaming the streets of Cincinnati — which means Shadow Hare officially has an arch-enemy … and he’s really, really cheap.

Check out the story.  It’s worth it just for the Craigslist posting.

Here are a few photos that I took of the Flying Pig Marathon with my iPhone.  I was standing on Gilbert Avenue by WCPO Channel 9.  It’s a pretty nice vantage point where you can see all the runners heading out and the half marathoners returning.

From Cincinnati.com: Terry’s burger lands on Food Network Magazine’s ‘ultimate’ list

The burger served at Terry’s Turf Club in Linwood has landed on Food Network Magazine’s list of the “ultimate burgers.”

Just received this press release from the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center.

Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand
Guest curated by Pedro H. Alonzo in consultation with the artist, and developed by ICA/Boston
February 20-May, 2010
Levels 4 and 5
 
The first one-person museum survey of Fairey’s work, Supply and Demand coincides with the 20th anniversary of the artist’s controversial career.  It gathers over 80 works created from 1989 to the present, and traces the development of his career from the earliest Obey imagery to his current efforts.  Featuring the multi-layered renderings of counter-cultural revolutionaries and rap, punk and rock stars which carry his iconic use of black, white, and red, the show includes screen prints, stencils, stickers, rubylith illustrations, collages, and works on wood, metal, and canvas.  First shown at the CAC in Beautiful Losers in 2004, Fairey has developed into one of the most influential street artists of our time.  Despite breaking many of the spoken and unspoken rules of contemporary art and culture, his work is now seen in museums and galleries, as well as the worlds of graphic design and signature apparel.  Building off of precedents set by artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, Fairey easily shifts between the realms of fine, commercial, and even political art.  Recently, his portrait of Barack Obama drew a new level of attention to the artist’s work, and has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.   
 
Fairey was born in 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina, but lives and works in Los Angeles.  He graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1992 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration.   

For more information about the exhibit, see my previous blog entry: Shepard Fairey “Supply & Demand” Museum Retrospective coming to Cincinnati