Until we meet again

In Washington D.C., the haven for "opinion-makers," two former Cincinnati Post staffers are leading the campaign for the minds of the nation's elected leaders.

Michael Kelly, editor of the New Republic, and Claudia Winkler, managing editor of the Weekly Standard, both worked for the Post in the mid-1980s.

Kelly, who took charge at The New Republic last fall, already has made waves by challenging the journal's traditional liberal bent on certain subjects. He even has called President Bill Clinton "a shocking liar," "an occasional demagogue," and "the fairest of fair-weather friends."

That piece earned the 39-year-old Kelly a profile in Columbia Journalism Review earlier this spring. He has pulled no punches in redefining the traditional liberalism that long has defined The New Republic.

"It seems to me that in the last 10 years or so, the left has succeeded in trashing liberalism and ruining it," he told CJR.

Kelly was a reporter at The Post from 1983 to 1986. He left Cincinnati to join the Baltimore Sun and then the New York Times, then moved again the The New Yorker magazine as a Washington correspondent. He perhaps is best known nationally for his work on the Persian Gulf War, producing a book titled, "Martyr's Day: Chronicle of a Small War."

The CJR story, written by Senior Editor Mike Hoyt, called Kelly "tousled, short and roundish, not quite a visual match with the hard-nosed prose ... He looks like the newspaper reporter he used to be."

Hoyt called Kelly's style "writing as combat, both ideological and personal."

In his new job, Kelly is competing with Winkler, who has been managing editor of The Weekly Standard for more than a year. She was an editorial writer and editorial-page editor at The Post from 1983 to 1989, then moved on to become chief editorial writer for Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C.

The pair, how first met growing up in Washington, promise the competition will be friendly.

"I've been a total fan of Claudia's since I was 16 years old," Kelly to The Post after he was appointed editor of The New Republic last year. "It's going to be fun competing against her, but I guess We'll have to be a little more careful when we talk to each other now."

Whatever happened to ...

Tracking down former newsies

Resumes get surreptitiously dusted off.

Suits get taken to the cleaners.

Musty clip collections resurface.

Then there are the farewell lunches, the good-bye columns, the notes left by editors whisked off to higher posts in faraway places.

Pretty soon, the after-work chat gets around to:

What ever happened to so-and-so?

Journalists are a notoriously transient bunch, and even the deeply rooted Cincinnati variety occasionally sets out on a new adventure.

Here are a few we've tracked down.

­ Cliff Peale is a business reporter at The Post.

The business at hand

Former Enquirer business editors, meanwhile, are spread out all over the country. Among the journalists who have held that title in the last decade, Kerry Klumpe is now managing editor for the American Bar Association Journal in Chicago, John Morris works for an Atlanta business that produces daily magazines for air shows, John Byzkowski runs accounting firm Deloitte & Touche's online service, Linda Dono Reeves is an assistant city editor for the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal, and Jon Talton is business editor for the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.

During the same period, a handful of local business reporters have migrated into public relations jobs.

Four former Cincinnati Post business reporters, for example, are now PR staffers in the corporate world: Rick Kennedy, at General Electric's aircraft engine operation in Evendale; Rich Boene, at Cincinnati-based media firm Scripps Howard; Gary Rhodes, at Cincinnati-based pharmaceutical services firm Omnicare Inc.; and Jennifer Kent, for Indianapolis power company IPALCO Inc.

The Enquirer business desk's most recent departee, Meghan Henterly Glynn, is media relations manager for Comair Inc.

­ Patricia Gallagher is a former Enquirer business reporter who, after a sojourn with Crain's Chicago Business, has returned to Cincinnati to freelance and raise her two children.

Back to business

Paul Furiga is another former Enquirer business reporter who now is editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times, a weekly business newspaper and sister publication to the Cincinnati Business Courier. He became editor in July 1994 after the closing of Ohio Week, a 400,000-circulation statewide weekly magazine where he served as senior editor.

In his six years after leaving the Enquirer, Furiga worked for Thomson News Service in its Washington bureau, covering politics, and the automobile, steel and nuclear industries. He was the bureau chief from 1991 to 1993.

­ Skip Tate, a former business reporter himself, is a staff writer for Cincinnati Magazine.

The president and executive director of the National Society of Professional Journalists will be the speakers at the next meeting of the Cincinnati Chapter.

Steve Geimann, SPJ president, will give his overview of the journalism business, while Greg Christopher will give us a state-of-the-organization report about what's going on in SPJ nationally.

The meeting will be a noon luncheon on Friday, April 25, in the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce headquarters, 300 Carew Tower, downtown.

Beverages will be provided, but you should bring your own lunch.

Did you get a copy of the chapter's contest rules?

If not, print people, call Cliff Peale at The Post, 665-4700.

Broadcast people should call Maryanne Zelezink at WNKU, 572-6564.

NBC news anchor Linda Vester, a native of Milford who attended Ursuline Academy, will be the featured speaker at the chapter's awards banquet on Friday, July 11, at Union Terminal.

She most recently worked as an NBC news correspondent based in Chicago, and in the network's London bureau.

She was one of the first American network television correspondents to reach Rwanda's capital and report the outbreak of that country's civil war.

She also was one of the first to report live from Zaire as Rwandan refugees fled there to escape the bloodshed.

In 1993, Vester served as national correspondent for the weekend editions of Today.

In 1992-93, she held a dual role as correspondent for NBC News and as a reporter for the network's WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.

Before that, Vester worked as a reporter for an NBC affiliate in Tampa, Fla. and for NBC News Channel.

While there, she spent three months in the Persian Gulf, providing coverage of Operation Desert Storm from Saudia Arabia and Kuwait.

She is a graduate of Boston University, and was a Fulbright Scholar of Middle East Affairs In Cairo, Egypt.

Don't miss the opportunity to hear the Milford native's "war" stories, both from the field and on the career track. Details on the time and cost will be in the next On Press.

'Unfair, inaccurate and pushy'

A recent study from Pew Foundation's The People and the Press details the decline in public opinion of journalism and journalists. Men under age 30 are our biggest detractors, the study summary states.

That's the assessment of the media made by respondents to a Pew Center The People and the Press survey.

"The American public is more critical of press practices, less enthusiastic about the news product and less appreciative of the watchdog role played by the news media than it was a dozen years ago," says the survey's summary sheet.

Some findings: