A New Paper in Cincinnati: the Enquirer   

The Cincinnati Enquirer has been around for 152 years, but its image has changed dramatically in the past 18 months. It's not just the paper's sparkling new offices, or its new publisher, editor, managing editor, business editor and editorial page editor. It's the content.

After several years of criticism for botching major stories and going easy on local business leaders (including
S & L felon Charles Keating, brother of recently retired Publisher Bill Keating), the Gannett-owned paper has reinvented itself.

"It used to be appalling how neatly the newspaper fit in the business community's pocket," says Felix Winternitz, a former Enquirer features editor who is now editorial director at Cincinnati Magazine. "They're stepping on many toes now, often."

"It had a comfortably mediocre standard," agrees the Enquirer's new managing editor, Janet Leach, a former metro editor at the paper who returned after working for five years in Arizona.

While some observers, including former Editor George Blake, insist the "old" Enquirer was plenty aggressive, the paper's reputation had taken a beating. In 1989, Cleveland's Plain Dealer broke a story about an Enquirer editor who left the paper after being accused of sexual harassment, an incident the Enquirer did not report (see our September 1992 issue). The Enquirer's policy of not using anonymous sources except in extreme cases hurt its coverage of the gambling charges leveled at baseball's Pete Rose. Soon after, the Enquirer got a "dart" from the Columbia Journalism Review and a scolding from the Washington Monthly for its Keating coverage.

Blake, now the paper's vice president for community affairs, says such criticism was uninformed. "I don't think any one of those publications ever reviewed the files of the newspaper," he says. "There were hundreds of stories written about Charles Keating." While he says the changes at the Enquirer have been "good for the newspaper and the community," he doesn't consider his tenure to have been "non-aggressive." He cites the Enquirer's 1980s coverage of nuclear waste problems as an example.

The recent changes began soon after Harry Whipple left his job as head of TNI Partners, which manages the business side of the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Citizen, to take over as Enquirer publisher in April 1992. Whipple's first hire was Peter Bronson, formerly with the Citizen, to improve the Enquirer's editorial page.

ëike his predecessor, Thomas Dephardt, who retired after 32 years, Bronson gives most issues a conservative spin. But he's made room for several new columnists, and letters to the editor have shot up from eight a day to as many as 70.

Next Whipple brought in Lawrence K. Beaupre, executive editor of Gannett Suburban Newspapers in White Plains, New York, as editor. Beaupre hired Leach, formerly city editor at the Arizona Republic and managing editor of the Phoenix Gazette.

Most recently, Beaupre named Jon Talton of the Rocky Mountain News as business editor. The troubled section has gone through a string of editors, many of whom clashed with management over how aggressive the paper's business coverage should be.

Since Beaupre's arrival last December, the paper has produced a series of investigations that would have been unthinkable under the old regime, according to several staffers. Beaupre also has increased training, given managers more autonomy and devoted more resources to going after big stories.

The coverage of Keating's conviction by a federal jury in Los Angeles last January got two full inside pages and several stories and photos out front, while the city's health commissioner resigned in February after the paper reported he had called in sick numerous times to work a second job as a prison physician.

In August, a four-part series detailing the financial and legal troubles of Cincinnati businessman Carl Lindner, whose empire includes Great American Communications, Financial World and Chiquita Brands International, set off an explosive reaction. Thriftway supermarkets, whose CEO is Lindner's brother, Richard, stopped selling the Enquirer for six weeks after the series appeared, and there have been reports that several Lindner companies pulled ads. (Enquirer managers will not discuss the matter.) The paper did net a controversial full page ad from Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones, paid for with taxpayer dollars, defending Lindner and promising that "Carl's friends across the river would never treat him that way."

Some critics say the Enquirer changed too quickly and has alienated many readers in the tight-knit city. "It's being managed by outsiders," says Thomas Noonan, president and general manager of Press Community Newspapers, a chain of weeklies that competes with the Enquirer. "In some ways they still don't quite understand the nuances of this overall community."

But others say they welcome the competition. "It elevates us all," says Laura Pulfer, editor and publisher of Cincinnati Magazine, which recently ran a glowing story about the changes at the paper. "We find ourselves knowing that..we have to think of a better, smarter way of doing things."

So far, readers seem to like what they're getting. Daily circulation has reached 198,832, the highest in 32 years, according to Whipple. Sunday circulation is at a record 348,744.

Some business leaders have also noticed a change. John Williams, president of the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, notes that after his staff finishes flagging important stories in the paper, "there are an awful lot more marks than there used to be."