The New Inquirer and Daily News Websites Are Finally Live! [Updated]


The brand-spankin’ new websites for the Inky and the Daily News are officially live. As my colleague Joel Mathis noted last week, the DN, decked out it bold-faced red, has retained its familiar tabloid feel, while the Inquirer has a statelier feel. Along with the new sites, of course, are new paywalls, which you’ll discover as soon as you attempt to click on articles from Inquirer.com or PhillyDailyNews.com.

Key takeaways

  • Price-wise, your best bet is the same for both papers: Pay $2.50/week and get free digital access and Sunday home delivery. It’s actually more expensive to go straight-digital, as the papers are trying to encourage print subscriptions. (For the next few weeks, subscriptions at both papers are half-off, so you’d actually be paying $1.25 a week for a while; 8 weeks at the DN, 4 weeks at the Inky.)
  • The Inquirer’s blogs, listed on the right side of the homepage, are not paywalled, and link right back to their old Philly.com homes. The Daily News doesn’t have its blogs separated out from other content.
  • While we’re at it, here’s a little secret: None of these articles are actually paywalled. Philly.com, which was billed as a clearinghouse for online-only content, actually features all the same paywalled articles from PhillyDailyNews.com and Inquirer.com. Every April 15th piece I clicked on, from the DN’s “A City Awash in Guns” to today’s Inga Saffron column in the Inky are still available for free (here and here) on Philly.com. I’m no fan of paywall-hopping, and I sincerely hope the new paywalls work as well as the papers’ sites look, but for now, cheapskates can rejoice.

Update: [4:22 p.m.]: Daily News Digital Editor Josh Cornfield has filled in some blanks regarding the paper’s new paywall. First, he says, every story that’s in the physical paper will be available also on Philly.com. “I think there’s a large number of people out there who aren’t going to pay for content,” Cornfield says, and for them, Philly.com will always exist. The paywalled Daily News, in other words, will target regular readers who “respect the idea that it does cost money to do great journalism,” and wish to “become members of our club.” The website, he added, will feature multimedia content not available through Philly.com.

The same would appear for the Inquirer. Said Mark Block, spokesman for both papers: “It would be possible, if one wanted to conduct repetitive deep searches of hundreds of keywords and guesses at headlines to find all the [Daily News and Inquirer] stories on Philly.com, however this is exceedingly unlikely.” In other words, if you really don’t want to pay, you won’t have to. It’ll just be a pain.

About the lack of blogs currently available on the Daily News site (no Philly Clout, no Attytood right now) Cornfield says the paper’s waiting until they “look ready” before debuting them online. When they do, they’ll likely be located on the botton left-hand side of the screen, underneath the space where the “Voices” columnists are currently listed. It’s yet unclear whether they each get their own space, or will be lumped together (like the Inky’s site).

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the Daily News will be running a “promo code” in each dead tree edition so that people who buy newsstand issues can then get temporary access to PhillyDailyNews.com. Unlike most promotions, however, this one’s for “forever,” Cornfield says.