Media

Greater Cincinnati is something of a media-mad locale. At least a half-dozen new publications have launched startups in recent years, spawning fresh competition for news, for readers, and for advertising dollars. In total the region boasts 6 daily newspapers, 30 weeklies, and 2 dozen monthlies—enough to fill home recycling bins to the brim each week. The airwaves are jammed as well, with more than 50 radio and television broadcast stations jockeying for exclusives, audiences, and a winning spot in the ratings.

The biggest local news source is the Cincinnati Enquirer, the morning daily. The afternoon Cincinnati Post, sadly, closed on December 31, 2007.

The biggest media brouhaha this town has ever seen came in 1998, courtesy of a feud between Chiquita Banana Co. and the Enquirer. Chiquita, owned by Cincinnati’s wealthiest man, Carl Lindner, was the target of an Enquirer investigative series that badly misfired. By year’s end the reporter on the series, Mike Gallagher, had been fired by his newspaper and sentenced as a felon for illegally tapping into Chiquita’s corporate voice-mail system as he dug for facts. The editor of the paper, Larry Beaupre, had been canned as well. And an embarrassed publisher, Harry Whipple, had publicly renounced the series in three prominent front-page apologies, not to mention paying Lindner (who, ironically, used to own the daily himself) $14 million in a hastily arranged legal settlement. The impact on Cincinnati journalism was felt for years. First, the Enquirer inherited a series of new editors. Then there was the fallout on newsroom morale and ensuing staff exodus. “Welcome to the Enquirer,” read an unsigned Jim Borgman cartoon posted on office bulletin boards soon after the news of the public apology broke. It showed dazed reporters standing amid apocalyptic rubble. And dazed they were.

The banana scandal spawned a million groaner headlines: “Final A-peel;” “Bitter Fruit;” “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR, ABC, CNN, Reuters, Newsday, the AP, and Agence France-Presse all came to town to cover the story, which made the front pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on the same day. Call it our very own media banana-gate, one that, to this day, won’t go away.

At least the Enquirer was trying to do serious investigative reporting with its Chiquita series, however botched the results. When it comes to the television landscape around here, with the notable exception of Channel 9’s I-Team investigative reports, you’re more likely to view gory crime coverage on the nightly newscasts. “If it bleeds, it leads” is the station managers’ motto around here.

On the radio side, the face of the Cincinnati market is changing, and it looks a lot like Clear Channel Communications Inc. The Texas-based media monolith operates some 500 stations. In this market, it owns eight radio stations, including the highly popular WLW (700 AM) and WEBN (102.7 FM). In the process of acquiring these stations, it bought out or eliminated much of its competition.

Clear Channel isn’t the only national media giant in town. The E.W. Scripps Company and its spinoff broadcasting company, Scripps-Howard, are also headquartered in Greater Cincinnati and, collectively, the two own 40 daily and weekly newspapers and nine TV stations across the country, in addition to numerous cable franchises and cable channels (including HGTV and the Food Network), a newspaper syndicate, an entertainment production company, and a news service. Scripps also distributes such comic strip mainstays as Dilbert. That’s a lot of national media influence coming out of Cincinnati.

Much of Cincinnati’s electronic media presence dates from Powel Crosley, who manufactured affordable tabletop radios in the 1920s and who founded WLW radio in 1922 and WLWT-TV (Channel 5) in 1945. WLWT was the first television station to go on the air in Ohio. In its early days, WLW radio broadcast at 500,000 watts. It had to cut back to 50,000 watts, though, after complaints that it was drowning out stations from here to Cuba and that the signal was so strong people were picking it up in the metal fillings in their teeth. The station remains a clear-channel station, meaning it is the only station in the region that broadcasts at its 700 kilocycle (AM) frequency.