Culture Maker of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Culture Maker of the Week Is and Who Runs It

Culture Maker of the Week is a recurring reader ballot from Cincinnati CityBeat, the newspaper whose masthead, citybeat.com domain and Best of Cincinnati franchise anchor the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio market. The paper describes the series as a celebration of the people who make Greater Cincinnati more vibrant, joyful, thoughtful and alive, and it sits in the arts and culture vertical rather than under a dining, retail or services banner. Every round asks readers to lift a single local person, which makes it a narrower and more personal honor than the paper's large annual lists.

The voting is hosted on citybeat.com, the newspaper's own domain. No third-party balloting vendor sits between the reader and the tally, and the live ballot lives in the arts path of the site. The current edition asks readers to choose among DJ Prymtime, Tracey Liu and Jamison Walker. LINK Media, LLC holds the copyright line on the masthead, which places the program inside the paper's own publishing operation rather than under an outside sponsor or a national contest network.

The Dated Timeline for the Series

Two edition years are confirmed for the series: the ballot ran in 2025 and returned in 2026, which is what supports treating it as an annual program. The round now live was published on September 11, 2026 in the paper's arts coverage. Its closing line tells readers unlimited repeat voting is welcome until noon on Sept. 18, and the same page promises that the winner will be announced the Friday after voting ends.

Beyond those anchors the paper prints little structure. No opening date for the round appears alongside the close, no calendar for the 2027 cycle is posted, and the ballot carries no eligibility text for nominees. The frequency rule is also thinner than most contests: the page sets no limit beyond its own invitation to keep coming back to vote, and nothing about registration or residency is printed anywhere on it; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

That thinness matters for any supporter planning around the ballot. A contest with a published rulebook tells you exactly where the edges are; this ballot hands readers a close time and a repeat-vote invitation and leaves the remaining questions to be read off whatever page the paper publishes next. Watch the arts section rather than assuming the September pattern holds every time, because the printed confirmation covers the 2025 and 2026 editions and nothing later.

How a Supporter Votes in the Live Round

Supporting a nominee is deliberately simple. Open the ballot page in the arts section of citybeat.com, read the profiles for the current round, and click through for the culture maker you want to win. The page welcomes unlimited repeat voting, and votes cast before the noon close noted above all count the same way, with no registration wall or stated cap standing in front of a return visit.

The other door is nomination, and it never shuts. Nominations are always open, and CityBeat asks readers to tell the paper about an artist, DJ, chef, bartender, muralist, musician, organizer, educator, performer, community builder or other local human making Cincinnati a more interesting place. A name submitted today can surface in a later round, as the rotating nominee list on the live page shows.

Nothing on the ballot asks a voter to create an account, pay a fee or install anything; the action is a click on the nominee and a return visit whenever the supporter wants to vote again. If the person you want to back is absent from the current ballot, the nomination route is the only way in, since the page mentions no write-in box. Because the nominee set changes from round to round, check who is listed before assuming earlier names still stand.

Where This Ballot Sits Among Its Ohio Neighbours

Culture Maker of the Week shares a market with a wider set of Ohio public ballots, and knowing the neighbours explains what makes it distinct. The closest relative is Best of Cincinnati, run by the same publisher, which spreads across many categories and businesses once a year. The people-focused honor is the opposite shape: a short ballot, a handful of named individuals, and a fresh question round by round rather than a seasonal push.

Around the state, the siblings answer to different publishers and formats. 97.1 The Fan Pizza Madness Columbus is a radio station's food bracket in Columbus. The Akron Community's Choice Awards serve the Akron market, while the Best in Ohio Business Awards and Best of Ohio take a statewide view. In Columbus again, the CBUS Top Picks Community Choice Awards run a citywide readers-choice list.

The practical difference for a nominee is scale and exposure. A statewide business award competes against a long field of firms; this ballot competes against the other names printed on that round's page, and victory depends on mobilizing a personal network quickly, since the close arrives at noon and the announcement follows that Friday.

Getting More Support for a Nominee Here

The ballot's own wording does most of the work for a determined supporter. Because CityBeat invites readers to keep voting without limit, an organized network can return repeatedly through the open window, and because nominations are always open, a person or business that gets named early enjoys a longer runway before a round featuring them goes live. Share the exact ballot link rather than the homepage, ask each supporter to vote on every visit, and time the final push before the noon close. CityBeat prints no statement about third-party voting assistance anywhere on the ballot, so the honest baseline is the paper's own invitation to keep voting. For tactics that transfer across free public ballots, read our guide to getting more votes online, which covers outreach, timing and follow-through in detail.