In two days, Diana O’Connor will press a red button and end 172 years of history at The Enquirer.
Her touch will stop the newspaper presses for the last time in Cincinnati.
Come Monday, when The Enquirer’s new format debuts, the paper will be printed in Columbus.
Stopping the presses means the end of the line for 97 production workers.
Together they have 2,544 years experience putting out the Queen City’s last daily newspaper. That’s an average of 26 years per person.
These newspaper veterans are not happy about losing their jobs. But the anger and sadness they feel are far outweighed by the affection they share for their work.
Each of the dozen employees I talked with before, during and after a recent press run described how they felt about their job with the same word: Love.
“I love my job,” O’Connor declared as she pulled ultra-thin aluminum photographic plates from the presses at The Enquirer’s soon-to-be-silent Western Avenue plant in Queensgate, where the paper has been printed since 1979.
