Cincinnati Post prints last editions

The newspaper got its start in 1881.

CINCINNATI (AP) — The final Post editions hit the streets Monday, the latest casualty of national trends of disappearing afternoon newspapers and of cities left with only one daily.

But even with The Cincinnati Post closed after 126 years, its parent company plans to keep a remnant of its sister Kentucky Post going as an online site. A news story about the kypost.com site was included in newspaper editions that bid farewell to their readers with a front-page “-30-” symbol, traditionally used by journalists, printers and telegraphers to signal the end of a dispatch.

“It’s a sad day, but we’re going out with our heads high,” editor Mike Philipps, a 30-year Post veteran, said in a front-page story. “This paper made a difference in the community.”

Dozens of newspaper executives and retired employees came to The Cincinnati Enquirer’s printing center to watch the last Post editions roll out. The Post had operated under an agreement with The Enquirer’s owner, Gannett Co.

“It’s sad but inevitable,” said William R. Burleigh, chairman of Post owner E.W. Scripps Co. and a former editor at the newspaper. “There’s a lot of history, a lot of wonderful people.”

“It’s the end of an era,” said retired printer Bill Inskeep, 65, who said he delivered the Post as a teen. “A lot of people are going to miss it.”

The Post newspapers have been struggling for decades. Scripps, based in Cincinnati, decided in July to close them when a three-decade-old joint operating agreement with Gannett expired at year’s end.

Post weekday circulation was down to about 27,000, less than a tenth of its figures in 1960 before movement of readers to the suburbs, household lifestyle changes, the expansion of television news, and later, the rise of online news and advertising sources. More than half of the U.S. afternoon newspapers operating five decades ago have closed.

Cincinnati’s morning daily, The Enquirer, has a circulation of some 200,000, rising to nearly 300,000 on Sundays. The Post didn’t have a Sunday edition.

The kypost.com site beginning today will supersede the current Post site and will share content with the Scripps-owned Cincinnati TV station WCPO-TV and its Web site.

Post veteran Kerry Duke will be managing editor for the site, which will have a full-time reporter, free-lance journalists and contributions from “citizen journalists” in addition to WCPO and news services. The site will focus on the three counties just across the Ohio River, the northern Kentucky area where the majority of the Post newspapers’ last subscribers have been.

Some 9,000 extra copies were printed Monday of the Post, its pages loaded with staff and reader remembrances, stories about its history, and archival photos such as actor Cary Grant’s 1955 visit to the Post newsroom and Cincinnati Reds’ star Pete Rose’s 1970 All-Star game collision with Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse.

The Post, which dates to 1881, was known for colorful, lively journalism.