Cincinnati – The E.W. Scripps Co. delivered the bad news Tuesday for The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post, saying it will cease publication Dec. 31 after more than a century.
The decision wasn’t surprising. The Cincinnati Post’s daily circulation has sunk from more than 270,000 in 1960 to one- tenth of that – 27,000 – today. The paper has been cutting staff since 2001.
The Post is the latest in a series of afternoon newspapers that have disappeared. In 1960, the nation had 1,459 afternoon newspapers. By 2006, the number had dwindled to 614, according to Editor & Publisher.
Gannett Co., a newspaper and broadcasting company based in McLean, Va., that owns The Cincinnati Enquirer, gave notice three years ago that it would not renew a 1977 joint operating agreement in which it was responsible for business operations of the Post newspapers, including advertising and subscription sales, production and distribution. The agreement is set to expire Dec. 31.
The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 allows such merging of business operations when a newspaper is in danger of financial failure.
Cincinnati-based Scripps has maintained an independent editorial department at The Post but doesn’t have advertising and circulation sales staffs or other production and business employees. It also lacks printing capability. Scripps and Gannett have shared the combined profits of the newspapers.
“It’s a day we dreaded,” said Rich Boehne, chief operating officer for Scripps and a former Post staffer. “Based on the changes in the newspaper industry and changes in media consumption, we knew it was coming. You still hate to reach the point where you have to announce that what has been an unbelievably great news voice would be silenced at the end of the year.”
Changing reader habits, along with television news and the Internet, have taken a toll on afternoon newspapers in the United States. Paid circulation when the Cincinnati joint operating agreement started was 188,000.
“Afternoon newspapers have been in trouble a long time,” said Philip Meyer, a journalism professor at University of North Carolina who wrote the 2004 book “The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age.”
Scripps operates newspapers in 17 markets, including the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal, the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel and the Ventura County (Calif.) Star.
