When The Philadelphia Inquirer changed its web address from “Philly.com” to “Inquirer.com,” it marked a seminal shift in how consumers locate the news. Some people quickly became accustomed to the change, while other people preferred to type the other URL to access the information they desired to know. If people type “Philly.com” into their browser, it automatically redirects to “Inquirer.com” and has been doing so for quite some time. The newspaper is one of the most widely circulated and trusted media outlets in the area, and something to which John Kincade of 97.5 The Fanatic still subscribes.
Bob Cooney, co-host of The John Kincade Show, used to write for the newspaper and now estimates that he and his wife occasionally make monthly payments. It confounds him why the newspaper has not remained more fastidious towards ensuring it collects remuneration from its subscribers, especially as the business continues to struggle and consolidate.
“They might look up and say, ‘You know what? Let’s see if we can get a couple of dollars from them,’” Cooney said. “I swear to god [my wife] has said to me, ‘I randomly pay them something every once in a while and we still get it delivered.’”
The issue was persistent while Cooney was at the paper, which has predicated itself off the paid subscription model. Kincade does not get the newspaper delivered to him and instead reads it online, but he is able to vividly recall his father’s job delivering The Philadelphia Bulletin over the span of two decades. Some of these newspapers, however, seem to be slow to evolve to the changing times – at least according to Kincade – when he discovered the launch of a new free sports blog by The Philadelphia Inquirer this week.
On Twitter, The Philadelphia Inquirer announced that on every weekday, it will be bringing sports fans news, analysis and rumors about the local sports teams through a free online blog. This marks the latest shift in sports coverage by a large publication after the Los Angeles Times changed its sports section to reflect the format of a magazine.
The New York Times is forgoing the section in its entirety, instead opting to assimilate sports coverage from The Athletic, the national digital outlet it bought last year for $550 million. Whether this means the cessation of the newspaper’s individual sports section remains to be seen, but this approach will surely modify the way some sports fans engage with content.
“The Inquirer now is having a blog and it’s, ‘Look, we have this new thing – it’s a blog!,’” Kincade said. “I’m going, ‘Oh my gosh, is this a tweet from 2010?’”
“The funny thing about the Inquirer vs. ‘Philly.com’ thing is that it is a prime example of why the bosses there have no idea what they’re doing,” added show producer Pat Egan. “….They actually thought, ‘You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to make this prestigious – we’re going to make it ‘Inquirer.com.’ I don’t know about you guys, [but] I can barely spell ‘inquirer.’ I really have to think about it, so any time I got to that website, I’m still typing in ‘Philly.com.’”
