Death of a Newspaper: A Final 2007 Post About the Cincinnati Post

Today the 126-year old Cincinnati Post and Kentucky Post published its final issue. This is no small deal, and even the New York Times gave the matter half a dozen column inches this morning.  Admittedly,I wasn't a huge reader of the Post, but it's hard not to feel bittersweet, even a bit nostalgic, about its exit. Indeed, earlier today I couldn't resist cruising around the streets of Cincinnati to capture the paper's last breath of circulation in action. Regrettably, after visiting nearly a dozen stands, I only found one that had copies of the new edition.  Here's a photo gallery from my journey.  While Cincinnati is now a "one-newspaper," I'm probably stop short of using the word "consolidation" to describe what's going on. With the advent of blogging and other forms of CGM, it's just not that simple anymore. Indeed, media continues to fragment everywhere, and the challenge for print publications is to not only harness the digital space an extension of what they do well offline, but also to co-create content with consumers and readers who bring new skills and capability to the table in the event capture and packaging department. Easier said than done, of course, but there's experimentation taking place among newspapers on this front, even here in Cincinnati, with the Cincinnati Enquirer exploiting "expert moms" as part of program called CincyMoms.  Local TV stations are also getting into the act, and there's no question we'll see in 2008 a further blurring of the line around "who owns local content" question.  Never a dull moment!

And so "The Post" wraps up my final post of 2007.  Happy New Year!