You Almost Didn’t Make The Cut, Inky

I noted earlier that the circulation of the weekly editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer had registered a 2.3 percent increase recently, though the Sunday edition had slipped 2.9 percent. Despite that, though, Brian Tierney and Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C. are prepared to launch the “Flying Pigs II” ad campaign to note the weekly circulation increase.

In the wake of this news, we have this Editor and Publisher story of the top 30 most popular newspaper web sites for October.

And, by measure of audience per site, Philly.com registered 28th of 30 sites.

Now, to be fair, I believe there are a number of factors here, primarily population of the geographic area where the site is based (which to me explains why BaltimoreSun.com, a perfectly respectable site, came in dead last), as well as per capita income and (related to that) familiarity with and trends of online navigation, as well as location of computer-related industries (I believe the latter factor partly explains the fact that the sites for two Seattle newspapers placed in the Top 30 list). And depth and quality of content is critical also, of course, which explains why nytimes.com will always be at or near the top of the list.

But to me, this is another crystal-clear argument for Philly.com to incorporate more progressive content into its online “brand.”

As I posted about here awhile back, I approached Harold Jackson of the Inquirer (as well as Guy Petroziello of the Bucks County Courier Times) about picking up David Sirota in their newspapers (which would build up recognition to the point where he could be incorporated seamlessly to their sites). That didn’t go anywhere, but the navigation numbers from the E&P article indicate to me that it should have, especially given the fact that the Inky had no problem with picking up Little Ricky and middle-of-the-road pundit George Curry (here).

And this is more evidence that the “A” listers are gradually making their way into our corporate media, which makes the exclusion of Sirota look even sillier than it already is.

Update 11/15: Well, Markos sure got the "head explode" part right; sorry kos, but this is absolutely the end with Newsweek (Atrios is referring to Juan Williams of Fox, who was screaming on Hannity and Colmes about Newsweek's hiring of Markos).