Karl reports the following at PhillyFuture:
Dan Rubin, the Inquirer's first blogger to engage the local blogosphere, announced the Inky was promoting him into a columnist position, and shutting down Blinq.
Congrats to Dan Rubin for the move, but as I said in his comments thread, Blinq should live – either with a new blogger keeping it on, or with Dan using it as a tool for his new column. The shuttering of the URL, of the community that rose around Dan's engagement at Blinq, is self-inflicted wound.
To which I say Inky management is STUPID STUPID STUPID!
Blinq is not a web page – it was a destination, an online brand, and a property. The Inky is walking away from a blog in Technorati's top 0.0001% of all monitored blogs, one with a Google PageRank of 6/10. Free suggestion to the Inky – use Blinq for reporting *REAL* breaking news as it happens, and for a twice-daily (think "early and late additions) roundup of important stories, providing background and additional content that doesn't make print. If anything, Blinq should be the frontpage of philly.com, for that matter. Allow comments, bookmarking, link to other (print, radio, blogs) sources, etc…
Also, a free suggestion to Dan Rubin – I'd make it a point to buy yourself a vanity URL (like danrubin.com) so that you can have your own online presence, or at least have some options come the next Inquirer restructuring.
Tags: briantierney, Dan Rubin, danrubin, Google, Online Brand, online presence, philly.com, Web_2.0
