Censored by the Enquirer...The Cincinnati Enquirer...

"I read it in the Enquirer...The Cincinnati Enquirer..."

About 20 years ago, that was the advertising jingle of what is now the Queen City's only daily print paper.

Media observers have been placing bets lately on which major American city will be the first to lose its last remaining daily. It might as well be Cincinnati, because the Enquirer today barely even qualifies as a real newspaper.

As recently as a few years ago, you knew when the Enquirer arrived, because the whole house shook when it landed in the front yard. Now the Enquirer is about the size of a Last Word from 1998.

And good gravy, the right-wing bias! You know the Enquirer is bad when the Cincinnati Post was actually described as the area's liberal paper.

The Enquirer isn't merely conservative. They've become fascist. While the comment section for online articles is freeped with right-wing pro-corporate diatribes and attacks against the poor, dissent is not tolerated. You can find countless instances of liberal-leaning commenters finding that their "comment has been removed for violating the terms of service."

My own comments have been hit with this corporate censorship by the EnCRYrer more times than I even want to count.

Those of us on the left don't have to be nearly as incendiary as those on the right to have comments removed by the Enquirer's thought police. Certain topics are almost guaranteed to bring down the Enquirer's wrath. Criticism of the long-troubled Campbell County Schools, for instance, is a surefire route to deleted comments.

In the fucked-in-the-brain world of the Cincinnati Enquirer, there is only one side to every topic. It's ironic that a media outlet would be so hostile to allowing both sides to be heard.

Because of the Enquirer's increasing fascism, I am never again linking to this sorry excuse for a paper.

What Cincinnati needs is a respectable print daily. But to start one would be a daunting task because of the cost. The American media is a millionaire's media. Still, we can probably put together a small group of investors to start a paper that would at least make a dent in the Enquirer's monopoly.