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Our new Enquirer begins in just eight days!

We are proud to bring a new Enquirer to Cincinnati. And we appreciate the thousands of you who helped us create it. Tens of thousands of you have seen prototypes along the way. Thousands of you have contributed through surveys, focus groups, emails to me and conversations with us in meetings around the community. Along the way, we made changes based on your feedback.

Let me walk you though what you’ll see starting Monday, March 11.

• See the prototype edition

The most obvious change, besides the difference in size, will be the visual impact. We know from our research that people are overwhelmed with information. Everything starts to run together. The most important information, the most moving storytelling, the most exclusive work we do, can get lost in the shuffle.

We also know that information and storytelling come in many forms. Strong, well-played photography inspires people to action. Informational graphics that tell a story by themselves are a terrific way to communicate context and trends and evidence, and readers respond well to them. Our new design will play up storytelling and information through photography, graphics and other design.

The content will flow better. The front page of each section will showcase one or two “cover stories.” Instead of starting three to five stories on each section front (and continuing them all to different inside pages), we will have the cover story and a couple of other headlines that lead you to full stories inside. We will still have the same number of stories in the paper; fewer will start on the section covers.

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The Enquirer is seeking nominations for 10 local women who are an inspiration to others through their volunteerism or philanthropy in the region.

Now in its 45th year, The Enquirer Women of the Year program has recognized 452 women throughout the decades.

Nominations can be made online or in writing. Deadline is Friday, Jan. 25.

Nomination guidelines and information about past honorees are available at www.Cincinnati.com/woy and by calling Mary Donaldson at 513-768-8112 or emailing mdonaldson@enquirer.com.

A luncheon on April 25 will honor the 10 women of the year chosen this year.

Thanksgiving is approaching, so it’s time to haul out the paint, crayons, pens, ink, beads, feathers, glitter, sequins and glue to dress this bird.

Four bird creators will win $100 each, and many more will see their birds on Cincinnati.com and in The Enquirer on Thanksgiving Day.

The first part of the contest is for best overall bird (chosen by judges from the Enquirer and Cincinnati.com newsroom). The winner will receive $100.

The second part is an online contest in which Cincinnati.com users will vote for a top bird in three age categories: 12 and under, 13-20 and 21 and up. We’ll pick five finalists in each age category and let you vote for your favorite online. The top vote getter in each category wins $100 cash. To vote, search Turkey.

Here are the all-important deadlines:

• To be eligible for the online contest, your dressed bird must be postmarked by Nov. 3, or at The Enquirer by 9 a.m. Nov. 5.

• To be eligible for the best overall bird, your bird must be in our hands (mail or hand delivery) by 5 p.m. Nov. 12.

Voting for the online contest will run Nov. 12 until the morning of Nov. 19.

Then, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 22, The Enquirer will print the top bird, the three online winners and many more of our favorites.

We can’t wait to see what you’ve got for us this year.

Dress the Turkey

The Enquirer

312 Elm St.

Cincinnati, OH 45202

All submissions must include:

• Who created the bird:
• Age:
• Neighborhood/City/School:
• Daytime phone:
• Email address (optional):

For more than 170 years The Enquirer has reflected the unique people, places and perspectives of this region, narrating the big and small changes that bring us together as a community. We look forward to serving in that capacity for years to come.

The evening of Monday, Oct.1, we will begin transitioning to our new Full Access subscription plan on our digital devices for computer, tablet and mobile websites.

Today is a great opportunity to step back and reintroduce you to some of the most important and popular features available through our print and digital platforms, to introduce you to some new features and products we are launching this week and to some content we hope you will enjoy.

• We’ll have the largest team of writers and photojournalists with the Reds on the road and at home.

• We can’t wait for you to experience a seven-part serial story by Krista Ramsey We’re not going to give anything away, but we can promise you it’s provocative.

• We are with presidential candidates as they campaign around the state. We are preparing primers on dozens of races and issues in Ohio and Kentucky to help you prepare to vote early or on Nov. 6. We will publish those in print and allow you to customize your own ballot using our Build Your Ballot tool at Cincinnati.com and nky.com.

• We have some new stories for you in our popular Passion for Place series. And starting Monday, we will introduce two new series. Inspired Locals will introduce us to the people who are creating things for the betterment of our community – artists, entrepreneurs, foodies, social activists. Next Sunday in Forum we will introduce Ideas in Action, essays by people who are taking personal action in the spirit of leadership and big ideas.

• Last week, we introduced our new Things To Do and Dining sites.

• We are excited to introduce RetroCincinnati.com, our new history website. We know that in our region history lives and breathes and everything really does come back around. So we’re going to dig into the Enquirer’s 170 years of archives and join with partners in the community to remind us how our region’s history shaped who we have become and how it affects the decisions we are making for the future. It will be just fun.

• We will introduce an nky.com app, a Things to Do app, and an iPad app that will create a great full-screen experience for our photos and videos.

• We are making a change to the home page of Cincinnati.com and nky.com so you can choose how you want to see our stories. The headlines in Top News on the home page reflect our editors’ choices of the most important and interesting local news of the day. Today’s Updates is simply all the news we’ve posted in the last 24 hours, from most recent to oldest. And Today’s Paper let’s you look at the local headlines that were in each section of the morning newspaper.

• You can read our e-Newspaper, an exact replica of the print edition.

All of that is available with your new full access subscription. If you’re not interested in using your digital access, you can share your digital access with someone who is.

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Just in time for Oktoberfest weekend and a fall packed with great events and shows, we are proud to kick off our brand new Things to Do and Dining pages at Cincinnati.com.

That is where you’ll find special online-only fall TV postings from John Kiesewetter, to expand on his fall TV preview in A&E today. It’s where I can always find Polly Campbell’s burger and pizza halls of fame when I’m trying to decide which new place to check out.

It’s where I learned that Arthur’s in Hyde Park will start serving only local beer. That Bridgetown Finer Meats (my old neck of the woods) has a terrific wine tasting. That the fries at BrewRiver Gastropub are to die for (they are; ask about the vinegar). That Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse will open Oct. 15. That I need to put the Edward Steichen Glamour Photography exhibit at the Taft Museum of Art on my calendar. That Nick Lowe is going to be in Oakley on Tuesday and I’d love to hear Water Liars at the Comet.

I think you get the idea.

Our website improvements are more attractive, more organized and even more current. We have a new easy search function so you can find the things you want. We’ve created guides to make it easy to keep track of lists – Cincinnati’s oldest restaurants, Bengals bars and tailgating spots, 40 fried chicken spots in Indiana, and more.

We’ll be creating more guides. What guides would you like us to create?

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Over the past few months, we’ve been around the community talking with readers about the breadth and depth of our content, our journalism, and listening to their thoughts about how we can serve the community better. We have sat and talked with people who have been devoted readers for decades and people who now rely on our mobile site and apps and our constant updates available through Cincinnati.com.

Many of you have responded with great questions, comments and ideas. You’ve told us what you like and what you would like to see improved. That’s helpful feedback as we continue to adapt The Enquirer to keep you informed and to serve our community better than ever.

We rely on the area’s largest staff of local reporters, columnists and photojournalists to do so. Writers like Cliff Radel and Krista Ramsey who inspire positive changes in our city. Watchdog investigative reporters like Sherry Coolidge, Barry Horstman and Jane Prendergast who expose stories you need to hear. Not to mention beyond-the-game journalists like Paul Daugherty, John Fay, Joe Reedy and John Erardi who keep you in the know about local sports and personalities.

We all know reading habits are changing fast. More than 742,000 people read The Enquirer’s print edition weekly. More than 365,000 local adults read The Enquirer’s content available through Cincinnati.com. Even more telling, nearly 128,000 of those adults look at our news and information content only through our digital platforms. What these groups have in common is they look to us for our unique content, which has been available online at no cost since 1996.

Just like any other business, as our customers’ needs change, so must we. One change is how readers will subscribe to our content.

Beginning in October, to enjoy Full Access to our content you will need a subscription regardless of whether you read our content in the print edition or through one of our digital platforms. I’ll be sending a letter in a few days to subscribers’ homes with all the details. But, we wanted to share this information with you in advance.

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Thousands of you have seen a copy of the prototype of our new print edition coming this fall. We’ve taken your feedback through surveys, focus groups, emails and at community groups. Today I want to walk you through the changes we’ve made as a result of your feedback and additional research.

The biggest change is that we will design to have much greater visual impact. We know from our research that people are overwhelmed with information. Everything starts to run together. There is risk that the important information, the most moving storytelling, the most exclusive work we do can get lost in the shuffle. We don’t want you to be able to walk past that stack of papers in the store or that copy on your kitchen counter without feeling you need to pick it up. We know that young adults are more compelled by bold visuals, and we all want young adults to be engaged citizens. The community will be so much better off if you are informed and involved.

The front page of each section will showcase one or two “cover stories.” Instead of starting three to five stories on each section front (and continuing them all to different inside pages), we will have the cover story and a couple of other headlines that lead you to the full stories inside. We will still have the same number of stories in the paper; they just won’t all start on the section covers. Most of those stories will be contained to either a page or facing pages so you can start the story on the left and finish it on the right. Readers have told us it is more convenient to start stories without jumping around inside the sections.

• See the latest Enquirer print edition prototype

We will make sure these pages continue to have the well-researched reporting and informational graphics that give you context and beautiful photos that put you behind the scenes or connect you with another neighbor in your community.

We had other interesting conversations with readers in this process to identify things for which people in this community have the most passion. We will showcase stories and photographs about those topics in a big way in our new print edition.

For example, we have already been publishing a series of stories called Passion for Place. These are stories about places that have shaped our communities’ personalities, places from which we have lessons to learn and places that have been important over time but now need extra attention to ensure they are vibrant for next generations. Every time we publish one of these stories, readers send me appreciative emails and ideas for other places we should write about. I hope you will share yours.

We’ll introduce a new page in the Sunday Forum section in the new print edition called Ideas in Action. Readers told us they were hungry for leadership – hungry for ideas but also hungry for action. So we’re inviting people to send us essays about actions they have taken in the spirit of big ideas.

We’re calling the third passion “inspired locals.” We were moved by the number of people we talked to who are creating things – artists, foodies, entrepreneurs and social activists, for example. We want to write about them and share what they are creating. Reporter John Faherty will take the lead on this for us and start a weekly column and blog. Reporters like arts writers Janelle Gelfand and Jackie Demaline and food writer Polly Campbell will write about inspired locals, as well. I think you’re really going to enjoy their stories, and I hope you’ll share ideas.

Most of the features that you already enjoy will continue to be where you expect in the new print edition. We will still have separate sections so you can still pass them around. We’ll add a Good News section in the Sunday newspaper, as I’ve mentioned before. We’re changing the format of the weekly TV book back to the more convenient one readers preferred a few years ago. And we absolutely will maintain and build on the local in-depth reporting that sets us apart from other media.

You can get a sneak preview of our latest prototype of the print edition for The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Kentucky Enquirer at libraries and by paging through an electronic replica online. Please let us know what you think and what you need from us. We’re here to serve.

Metromix has had a great ride for the past three years, sharing news of all the great events, restaurants, music, bars and clubs Greater Cincinnati has to offer. But now it’s time for us to shake up the status quo.

So on Sept. 19, we’ll be publishing our final issue of Metromix. But don’t worry – we’re still going to provide all of the same information, just in a different place and format. Metromix readers are getting a lot more of their entertainment information digitally, and we’re evolving along with you to deliver news the way you want it.

We’re currently hard at work relaunching Cincinnati.com’s Entertainment channel – consider this the Extreme Makeover: Entertainment Edition. We’re going to combine all of our entertainment coverage into one easy-to-navigate web site.

It’ll feature the same information that is in Metromix – event photos, calendar listings, music interviews, dining, bar and club news – plus information about performing and visual arts, theater, TV, radio and media, movies and pop culture. It’ll also have more of the features that readers have been asking us for – more roundups of fun things to do, cool places to go, and great places to dine, with lots of picks from Enquirer dining critic and reporter Polly Campbell. We’ll have a new mobile app, to help you decide where to eat and what to do while you’re on the go, and a new tablet app, showing all your favorite event and dining galleries in a larger, more dynamic format.

Thanks so much for always reading, and stay tuned – there are a lot of great changes in the works.

Tasha Stewart

Entertainment editor

Cincinnati.com / The Enquirer