INQUIRER.net turns 25, sets keen eye on the future

INQUIRER.net, the online arm of the Inquirer Group of Companies, celebrates its 25th anniversary today (Oct. 26) with a clear focus on the challenges ahead.

Launched in October 1997, it served as a response to the challenge of digital journalism and provided a new platform for the Inquirer brand of journalism. With a few thousand readers at the start, Inquirer.net steadily grew and now enjoys readership from millions of readers in the Philippines and across the globe.

Data from web traffic analytics provider Similarweb showed that from January to September this year, Inquirer.net remained as the top news website in the country with total visits of 165.3 million, ahead of key competitors.

Phenomenal

In his anniversary message, chair and president Paolo R. Prieto called Inquirer.net’s growth phenomenal and described the anniversary theme “INQUIRER.net: Relentless@25” as a fitting description to mark its stride and efforts to maintain leadership.

“Building on Inquirer’s credibility and upholding its mission of empowering Filipinos with news and information that affect their lives, we have vigorously expanded our content to attract more audience and appeal to their various interest regardless of gender, political leanings or standing in society. We are a website by Filipinos for Filipinos wherever they are,” said Prieto.

He encouraged the staff to continue “...to be relentless in the pursuit of our goal to be the top-of-mind source of news and information in the digital space.”

Director Marixi Prieto said the company’s achievements within a time frame of 25 years were no mean feat. She challenged the staff to maintain the authoritative and credible nature of news reporting “which we carry from our core roots. In this digital age of disinformation, misinformation, alternative facts, and Metaverse, we should remind ourselves about the noble role of media.”

Ma. Alexandra Prieto-Romualdez, Inquirer Group CEO, congratulated the staff for having “withstood the test of time and hurdled many challenges which helped the team develop resilience, strength, flexibility, and speed to aggressively expand in multimedia channels with a keen eye on the future.”

Digital pivot

The silver anniversary celebration highlights the last three years that saw massive strides undertaken by Inquirer.net despite the formidable challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These include the digital pivot of Bandera and Cebu Daily News in 2019 and Hinge Inquirer in 2020. Bandera has contributed immensely to web traffic with its entertainment stories and features, CDN Digital has maintained its leadership by focusing on local news that caters to Cebuanos, while Hinge has expanded the lifestyle content mix of the site.

Innovation

It also highlights the much-improved social media operations that resulted in significant amplification of Inquirer.net’s content and its efficient distribution to target audiences and communities.

The Sales and Marketing team, through its BrandRoom and InqPOP channels, thrived during the lockdowns as it continued to produce innovative and relevant campaigns for advertisers, thus generating record-breaking revenue at a time of market uncertainty.

Video work and content also grew; Inquirer.net and Bandera now have more than a million likes for TikTok videos and more than a million followers on YouTube with the latest foray into live digital newscasts like INQToday and mini-documentaries.

It also has placed great importance on data to guide news operations and improved its search engine optimization (SEO) process to keep its stories on top of searched content by readers.

The milestones achieved by Inquirer.net through its various channels and projects, as well as the direction it is taking to cope with the challenges of the future, have been placed in a special microsite on the website. Read them all through this link: https://inq.news/RelentlessAt25