For Immediate Release: Nothing.

The Cincinnati Enquirer continues to run story after story about the booming job market in Northern Kentucky. But take a closer look at these "news" articles and the only thing you'll find is a stack of press releases from the incoming or expanding companies.

That's not surprising. Approximately 90% of all news generates from press releases, and newspeople rely on releases of information to generate articles and feature stories. But they're also given an opportunity, if not an obligation, to research stories and to provide some objective reporting before they print them or show them on TV.

What's disappointing about the Cincinnati Enquirer's news coverage of incoming Northern Kentucky jobs:



  1. The Cincinnati Enquirer insists that Northern Kentucky is becoming a technology sector. In fact, inspect the new jobs more closely and they run more along the lines of call center, help desk and order fulfillment.
  2. The same Enquirer article focused on Ross Perot's Perot Systems expansion into the area and ignored Perot Systems consistently below-bad ratings for equality; they ranked at the very bottom in a study done by Human Rights Corporate Equality Index last year. And, they're one of many in the tech sector who send the "good jobs" overseas, leaving us with only the routine-production jobs.
  3. Another recent news story in the Enquirer touts that 2005 "marked the end of a job-loss trend in technology in Ohio and Kentucky." The article then goes on to explain that after losing almost 50,000 tech jobs between 2000-2004, Ohio and Kentucky added less than 2000 tech jobs in 2005 and that overall, our techies make $15K to $20K less than the national average. Reason for celebration? Hardly.

Northern Kentucky is clearly spinning itself as an info-tech hub, and more power to the cause- this kind of PR will probably lead to more companies moving to the area, too. Hopefully a few of them will live up to the hype.

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