Cincinnati/Kentucky Post to cease to exist by end of year ...

Down from nearly 200,000 to less than 30,000. Ugh. Employees had to know this was coming if they knew the circulation numbers. Still a very sad day. My heart goes out to them. Hope they all land jobs ASAP.

 

Sarge: Thanks for posting that (And how appropriate that someone named Sarge posted it). Todd Jones is a good guy.

Twoback: I was just curious how that could happen; makes sense though now that you mention the promo. Still, about a 30,000 drop in Sunday circ since 2000.

Viva La Post!

 

any chance the enquirer will absorb some of the post staffers?
and, just in case c. trent -- he of the excellent musical taste -- is checking in, is it status quo on the reds and bengals beats for the duration?

 

Let's hope they absorb more than the competition did the last time Scripps shuttered a paper...

 

Indeed Slappy.
We interviewed a kid last year who had been interning at the remaining Birmingham paper. Asked him how that day was, thinking he would show some respect for the men who lost their jobs.
Brat just said that it was such a hard day for him, something about covering more games or the like. Dead. In. The. Room.

 

Trent is an old friend and a dear friend, who is among the funniest fuckers I've ever met. I suspect he will be just fine when the Post shuts its doors because he's a damn fine writer/reporter and his blog is the epitome of what a beat writer's blog should be.

 

Though the demise of the so-weak-it's-strong Cincinnati Post is a sharp pain even for us staid (former) Enquirer types, the laments and tributes to date appear to have omitted the treasured memory of Earl Lawson, the famously feisty baseball writer.

Two anecdotes:

1) When I arrived in Tampa to cover the Reds for the first time in 1981, Earl introduced himself by explaining the ground rules. ""Timmy,'' he said, ""it's nothing personal, but I won't give you the sweat off my balls.'' Then, over the next three years, he proceeded to introduce me to almost everyone in baseball.

2) When John McNamara was fired, he told everyone who called that he would have nothing to say until his press conference -- two days later. McNamara broke his own embargo, however, by delivering an exclusive to Earl. The Post was so proud it had some stooge place copies of that day's paper with Earl's interview on every chair in the room where the press conference was to be held.

Naturally, the rest of us were infuriated by McNamara's duplicity and the Post's excessive celebration. Now that I'm almost over it, though, I have come to accept that Earl had succeeded where the rest of us had failed -- in earning McNamara's trust.

Earl was no sycophant. More than once he provoked players into physical confrontations. But his honesty was unimpeachable.

So, please, as you raise a glass to honor our fallen comrade, remember its representative in the Baseball Hall of Fame: Earl Lawson, he of the perspiring privates.

 

1. doubtful

2. well, writers on those two beats prepared by using their scripps-howard visa to book all their flights for the rest of the season