I wonder how that’s going for them. They used to give people a few free articles per month. Then we figured out that a private browser window got around that.
Now everything is post paywall. My hunch is the loss of ad revenue due to the traffic drop is not offset by new subscriber dollars.
The newspaper biz is careening into oblivion.
I don't know the answer.
My apologies to
@nittanyfan333 and others -- I try to never link articles behind paywalls. Alas, I subscribe to the Inquirer, which gives me access to their online content as well. I'll try to remember that just because I have access to the article doesn't mean that others have access.
In terms of online subscriptions, I read an article in the past year or so that indicated that the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal were the only publications that were doing really well (in terms of replacing lost ad revenue and lost print subscription revenue) with their online subscriptions. I have no way of verifying that; just passing along the info.
In terms of the Philadelphia Inquirer, it's a shell of its former self. There are some things that it still does well, but their investigative unit isn't close to what it once was, and their number of print pages per edition are greatly reduced. They still have a few in-house opinion writers that are good, and their sports coverage is still pretty good. (My only complaint there is that they closed their printing unit, and outsource their printing, so most days their delivered print copy doesn't have anything for games that end after 10-10:30 pm ET.)
