Retired Enquirer columnist Frank Weikel, who died Saturday, broke many news stories in his local “tidbits” column — accentuated with bold face paragraphs and SENTENCES IN CAPITAL LETTERS — including the investigation into Jerry Springer paying sex workers by check in 1974, without naming Springer!
Weikel, columnist from 1965 to 1987, was 95.
Among his many scoops was a front page column in 1974 that a “well known Cincinnati political figure is currently the subject of a VICE investigation that is under way in both Ohio and Kentucky" without naming Springer, then a Cincinnati City Council member.
"Several prostitutes have been interviewed and all tell stories that link him to a health club operation. LOOK FOR THIS STORY TO BREAK INTO HEADLINES IN THE NEAR FUTURE," he wrote on April 29, 1974.
Hours after the morning Enquirer was distributed, Springer, 30, stunned local political leaders by announcing his resignation from Council for “very personal family considerations.”
Two days later, Springer indeed made headlines by testifying in federal court about visiting the Leisure Health Club in Fort Wright, Ky., and writing “personal checks in exchange for the prostitution" in December and January.
Weikel was a police reporter for 13 years for the Enquirer before taking over the local column which had been written in the 1950s by Al Schottelkotte, who left the paper in 1961 to work full-time for WCPO-TV.
“Frank wrote what was called an ‘item-column’ and he was a master at it,” says Jim Delaney, former Enquirer Metro editor.
“Many of the items came from his law enforcement sources, built over decades. Frank could stroll through the Hamilton County Courthouse each morning and return to The Enquirer not just with tidbits and juicy gossip, but often information on what would become major news stories,” Delaney says.
After he broke a story, Weikel sometimes would push back at authorities he had criticized, sort of turning it into a daily soap opera. In his end-of-the-year column in 1978 he wrote: “TO THE ADAMS COUNTY SHERIFF: You’re harassing the wrong person for information supplied to this column about conditions at your jail . . . My information DID NOT come from the guard you’re blaming.”
The Cincinnati native joined the Enquirer in 1947, at age 16, as an Enquirer copy boy, or essentially a newsroom errand boy. He was promoted to a news reporter in 1949, one week after graduating from Purcell High School.
As a police reporter in 1960, he persuaded “a husky riverman” threatening suicide in his English Woods home to surrender to police. His instincts in 1964 led him to discover the body of a 4-year-old girl under the porch of a Fairfax home. Soon a 13-year-old boy confessed to the murder.
When he was promoted to columnist in 1965, editor Brady Black gave him two mandates: “He told me to be accurate, and to be controversial. I’ve tried to live up to both of those,” he recalled in an Enquirer interview.
His column wasn’t all hard news. He used his “Darts & Flowers” blurbs to praise people or actions that he liked, and throw darts at things he didn’t. He also liked to note when a person’s name matched his or her occupation.
Not only did he break the news, but Weikel also could make the news, too. In 1969 he was a founding trustee of Cincinnati’s Teens for Decency when Ohio Secretary of State Ted Brown chartered the organization.
The Enquirer also allowed Weikel, while columnist, to serve as one of the three elected members of the Springfield Township Board of Trustees. He would often conduct township business by phone at his desk in the newsroom.
As a 1983 Enquirer promotion stated: “Some people enjoy Frank Weikel’s column. Flowers to them. Some people hate Frank Weikel’s column. Darts to them. But they all read Weikel because he is interesting. Weikel has his ear on Cincinnati — and what he hears you read every morning in the Enquirer.”
Sometimes, upset targets of his reporting threatened violence. Weikel “learned to live with threats on his life, particularly when he exposed wide-open gambling in Northern Kentucky in the mid-1960s,” according to an Enquirer story.
In June of 1987, Weikel made front page news again. At age 56, he was leaving the paper to become community relations officer for Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis Jr.
After working for Sheriff Leis, Weikel and his wife moved to Florida, where he served as a county commissioner. He later returned to Greater Cincinnati. He was living at Twin Lakes retirement community in Montgomery when I visited him last October.
“I saw the column as a public service,” he told reporter Jim Rohrer when he was leaving the paper in 1987. “I have always believed in public service, and my new job with Simon Leis will be a continuation of that.”
Read more:
