The Inquirer will unveil a special interactive presentation Sunday commemorating its 180th anniversary.

In case anyone forgot why newspapers matter, the Philadelphia Inquirer will give the public a subtle reminder this weekend.

Philadelphia’s paper of record will launch a special multimedia presentation online Sunday to commemorate its 180th anniversary, which Technically Philly was given a sneak preview of yesterday, and which we promised to share yesterday.

According to Inquirer Executive Online Editor Chris Krewson, a team has been working on the project for several months.

“Credit goes to Frank Wiese, our Online Projects Editor, and Cynthia Greer, an artist in our graphics department,” Krewson said in an e-mail statement.

“Frank and Cynthia had collaborated before on the Please Touch Museum interactive book, which won a national Headliners Award for Journalistic Innovation,” he said.

Sure, call us media geeks�But after digging into the special presentation, we’re impressed. Follow the jump for more details of the special presentation, or see it on Philly.com.

The sleekly-designed interactive interface, which lets users scroll through decades of content, is filled with history-laden stories from its very first issue�the front page of which included a notice of steamboat schedules�and collects highlights throughout the years.

An iTunes Cover Flow-like browsing experience, which lets users scan through dozens of old editions, allows users to zoom into high-resolution scans of original front pages.

A comprehensive timeline details important events in the region’s history. Several content-heavy sections highlight memorable sports moments, important art venues and photographs of notable Inquirer memorabilia, like undated metal tubes used to keep home-delivered newspapers dry in inclement weather.

For the first time, a digitized collection of some of the Inquirer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning stories has been assembled for readers. They’re stories that anyone in the city can be proud of.

On Friday, Philly.com posted a video message from Governor Ed Rendell congratulating them on the milestone.

“I’ve done some dumb things and this is probably the dumbest that I’ve done. After getting the living daylights kicked out of me for 32 years, I’m doing a video saluting the Inquirer,” Rendell said in the video.

Be sure to check out the interactive package tomorrow, when it will lead Philly.com.

See Governor Ed Rendell’s video statement below.

Full Disclosure: All three founders of Technically Philly have done work for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Philadelphia Inquirer will launch a paid-content model on its Web site before the end of the year, according to a commemorative online package that will appear Sunday.

Philadelphia’s paper of record will debut the special multimedia presentation on Philly.com to commemorate its 180th anniversary, which Technically Philly was given a preview of today.

See our sneak peek at the project here.

The presentation includes a news story attributing the mention of paid content to Brian Tierney, Philadelphia Media Holdings Publisher and Chief Executive. Further details about the plans were not provided.

Inquirer Executive Online Editor Chris Krewson could not confirm the time line or the decision, but said that Tierney has spoken publicly about the possibility.

“In the past three months it’s been pretty clear from Brian’s statements that there will be a move to paid content on the Internet,” Krewson said in a telephone interview with Technically Philly.

“It would not surprise me at all to see us do something with paid content by the end of the year.”

Still, Krewson said that there are no plans for paid content in the immediate development pipeline. “There won’t be a pay wall anytime soon. For various technical reasons, we actually couldn’t do that if we wanted to.”

Top executives of the newspaper industry, including Philadelphia Media Holdings, met discreetly in Chicago Thursday to discuss online content monetization strategies, The Atlantic reported.

Though Tierney has been mum about PHM’s plans for online monetization, he has spoken to the importance of a paid online model.

While speaking at the Wharton Leadership Lunch at the University of Pennsylvania in February, Tierney contended that if the Web is to be the primary mode of content delivery, a paid subscription form would have to develop, according to Akkam’s Razor, a Philadelphia blog.

“Everyone wants content to be free,” he explained, “but you can’t do what we do and have content be free.”

The 1800-word commemorative article, written by Inquirer staff writer Jeff Gammage, reports on how the newspaper will continue to exist in years to come. Tierney is quoted in support of a paid content model.

“This idea of free access to your content is fundamentally as silly as we all thought it was 10 years ago,” Tierney said. “I think people will be willing to pay for quality journalism.”

Staff writers Sean Blanda and Christopher Wink contributed to this story.

Full Disclosure: All three founders of Technically Philly have done work for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The news flew through Twitter like the California fire storm that helped bring the micro-blogging utility to mainstream consumption.

Before a newsroom meeting broke, Pulitzer-Prize winning phtographer tweeted:

The Philadelphia Daily News will at the end of March be considered an edition of the Inquirer, though their staffs and competition will remain the same, for now.

Of course, what’s interesting is that the unsettling, if not undercutting, news of the People Paper first came to the masses via the latest fashionable social media, just the type of tool that newspaper executives seem to suggest could save the general interest urban daily. Well, that or kill it.

There are a host of technology in other forms that some say could bring society back from the brink of the earth-shattering demise of a three-centuries old means of disseminating and collecting information. They say the proliferation of mobile devices, like the Kindle, could be an opportunity to sell packaged news, in a similar though print-less form like today’s newspapers.

Recently, TMCnet talked to Associated Press General Manager for Mobile and Emerging Products Jeffrey Litvack about a new effort  the “Mobile News Network“ that brings local, national, international, business, entertainment, sports and other news from more than 1,000 participatingmedia organizations, supplemented by AP text, photos and videos.

Released by the AP’s so-called “digital cooperative” – an effort designed to bring AP members information to new digital outlets, the network is touted by AP officials as a way for local news organizations to increase revenue by introducing interactive content to younger viewers, building brands and offering news around-the-clock. [Source]

Arguments continue to rage on micropayments and protected content, like Newsday’s recent announcement of its protection paywall. Philadelphia’s two largest newspapers will now be a single paper circulating to some 440,000 people which is said to focus on increasing advertising yield and cutting down wire service costs, a big change, but not one that involves innovation.

Without basing on technology, some say the Daily News is destined to die, though Brian Tierney, CEO of Philadelphia Media Holdings, which owns the Inquirer and DailyNews, has said he will not let that happen under his tenure.

To be certain, any and all debate about saving the general interest daily as we know it – void of a single niche, primarily encompassing a broad geographical region and serving as a trusted record-keeper – involves very wide restructuring, most recently and notably seen in Time magazine’s cover story on saving the newspaper.

It must include technology and irrespective of the fads and fashions of Twitter and the like, it will circle somewhere around their form.

Photo by Christopher Wink. The historic white Inquirer building, longtime headquarters of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, as seen from the headquarters of Philly.com, in Center City.