May she rest in peace.

Journalism in Philadelphia (present company excluded) is going down hill faster than the Street mayoral dynasty.

Alas, the days of quality journalism at the Inquirer have long since passed. And while my love for the Bulletin lives on, the paper sadly does not. Real news is pretty much a foreign concept to NBC10, and the Daily News … well, I don’t even need a link.

But the most recent sad news isn’t in print or on television: It’s online.

While just about anything the Inquirer has done on the Internet has been horrible, there has been one major exception: Dan Rubin’s blog, Blinq.

(Inga Saffron’s Changing Skyline is unquestionably fantastic, but it’s not updated too often and or even hosted on Philly.com.)

For nearly two years, Rubin covered everything from the Phillies’ Sal Fasano to Super Bowl ads.

More important (and relevant to you Spinstas), Rubin was no stranger to Penn or the DP. He was all over Box in a Box, getting one of the first interviews with Wharton soph Melissa Lamb. And not like Stephen Morse needs more coverage (thanks Brosbe — see below), but Blinq also covered Morse’s explosive videos last semester.

Dan’s blog had style, humor and a Web site that, despite living under the Philly.com moniker, didn’t look like something from 1997. By the end, Blinq was getting nearly a quarter million hits each month.

Everything seemed to going smoothly until last week, tragedystruck:

Tie a toe-tag on Blinq. I’m getting ready to start another assignment here at the Inquirer. What I’m moving on to is the metro desk, taking a crack at being a local columnist. Talk about your old media.

Commenters chimed in quickly, with one adding,

the inquirer needs to clone you, so you can do both.

Rubin built a community that will be sorely missed in the Philly blogosphere. I’m sure he’ll be a great columnist, but he was a true Philly blog pioneer. Until Blinq returns (or the Inky comes with something better … which may happen in the next decade), I guess Philebrity will just have to do. Hats off to you Dan.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 2:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.