Philadelphia Newspapers to Give Away Android to New Digital Subscribers

Philadelphia, which is more of a high-tech area than many realize, will become the site of an interesting experiment in newspaper subscription marketing.

According to an AP story picked up by the San Jose Mercury News, the City of Brotherly Love's two major dailies will throw in a free Android tablet to paid digital subscribers. The web-based digital editions currently cost $155 per year for a subscription. Unsurprisingly, the initiative is aiming at the proverbial "young professional" market. While the reasoning is understandable, the newspapers' marketing teams might consider the number of "older professionals" who either own or are planning to purchase a tablet. These are people who are also accustomed to paying for a subscription and have probably read either or both newspapers over many years.

There are other moving parts to the story, such as the emergence of web-based applications "which can work on any device with a browser. The Financial Times launched a Web app last month," the AP story noted.

The two Philadelphia dailies were purchased in September, 2010 by a collection of hedge funds and creditors in a bankruptcy sale. The image, from the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project, shows the Inquirer Building (also known as the Elverson Building). It is included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Honey

My wife and I get honey from a husband-and-wife team in a nearby municipality. They keep bees and jar their own products. Sometimes, my wife buys small jars of honey and gives them to others as gifts. We use the honey ourselves and have developed a preference for its clean, clean taste. My wife has consistently claimed local honey was the best honey money can buy (sorry, no pun intended in the direction of Maria Bartiromo). I can't independently confirm my wife's assertion, but I certainly enjoy the honey we get. And that will just have to do for now.

It gives us great pleasure to support this sort of cottage industry, and especially those who create desirable environments for the endangered bee. There was quite a bit of justified alarm in New Jersey last summer, when the bee population plummeted throughout the state. The crisis brought into perspective the critical role bees play in agriculture and horticulture, and how we simply take their activities for granted.

To learn more about the buzz about bees, beekeepers, and honey, explore the link to today's Philadelphia Daily News . The story's writer, Deborah Woodell, also keeps a blog about honey, and it's worth checking out, as well.

The ancient Greeks were very partial to bees; Ephesus' symbol was the bee. The silver interior of the pendant (above) is modeled on an ancient Greek coin.