opinion

Doing what I love in the city I love

Well hello, Cincinnati. Nice to see you again.

You’ve changed since I left more than a decade ago. New restaurants Downtown and in Over-the-Rhine. A streetcar. Professional soccer. And did I see an IKEA up in West Chester?

Fantastiskt.

Of course, some things never change, and most of it feels like reacquainting with an old friend. Ed and Anthony are still selling furniture. Marty is the voice of summer. And Marvin Lewis, remarkably, is still the head coach of the Bengals.

How do you say “it’s complicated” in Swedish?

When I left in the fall of 2006, it was for a job, and a job is what brings me back. This week I started my new role as executive editor of The Enquirer. But the decision was much more than a career move. The lure of returning to the place I call home was too strong to pass up.

My family moved here the summer before my sixth-grade year. I attended what is now Winton Woods High School, got my first summer job working as a camp counselor at Camp Friedlander, and when it was time to pick a college I decided to study engineering at the University of Cincinnati. It took only a semester of physics and a visit to the newsroom of the college paper to realize my true calling. I changed majors, joined the staff of the News Record and have been doing journalism ever since.

My career took me to papers in Michigan and Iowa before I was able to reach my first goal, a job at The Enquirer, my hometown newspaper. I’ll never forget the thrill of my first day in the newsroom back in 1998, star-struck by meeting the journalists I had followed over the years. Political writer Howard Wilkinson. Sports columnist Tim Sullivan. Man-about-town reporter Jim Knippenberg. And of course, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman. It truly was a dream job.

Journalism tends to be a nomadic adventure, especially if your destiny is to be an editor in chief. There’s only one in each city, my boss at the time, former Enquirer editor Tom Callinan, pointed out. So after nearly 10 years at 312 Elm St., I left Cincinnati to be the editor of the Reno Gazette-Journal, one of our many sister papers. Northern Nevada became my second home as I fell in love with the mountains, nearby Lake Tahoe and the warm, friendly people of the Biggest Little City.

The next stop on my journey was USA TODAY, where I was an executive editor and worked to build the national news desk, officially networking our company’s 100 local news organizations with our national flagship. Being a journalist in Washington was an experience I’ll never forget, but I learned one important thing about myself. My passion is local journalism.

When the opportunity arose to return home – again – rejoining my colleagues at The Enquirer, I jumped at the chance. It’s still my dream job.

So now that you know a little about me, what can you expect from The Enquirer this year?

First and foremost, I will work hard to preserve and build upon The Enquirer’s legacy of serving the community and living up to our First Amendment responsibility to inform the public and hold our elected leaders accountable. My immediate predecessor and dear friend Peter Bhatia prioritized watchdog reporting, and I will continue that mission.

Second, as you’ve hopefully read today, we will use our reach and platform to provide leadership on issues that are key to the greater good of our community. We are uniquely positioned to capture the conversation, give light to varying points of view and guide the way with solution-oriented journalism.

And finally, to ensure The Enquirer is around for future generations, we will continue to transform and be innovative in the digital space. The struggles of legacy media organizations such as The Enquirer are well documented, so I won’t digress. But I’m happy to report that The Enquirer is growing its digital audience and reaching more people than it ever could with print alone. If you are a subscriber to any of our editions, be it print or mobile, thank you. We will work hard to keep your support. If not, I hope you'll consider supporting local journalism by subscribing here.

So that’s my story. I'm thrilled to be doing what I love in the city I love. And I’m not afraid to let it show.

Beryl Love is executive editor of The Enquirer and wants to hear from you. Find him on Facebook or email him at blove@enquirer.com.