Is this the future?
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and a gaggle of tech and media chroniclers gathered Wednesday at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for a first look at the debut edition of The Daily, News Corp.'s experimental iPad "newspaper."
Joined by Apple executive Eddy Cue, the company's Internet division chief, Murdoch unveiled the publication to which his company has committed around 100 staffers and an investment rumored to be around $30 million. (For up-to-the-second coverage, follow along on Fortune.com's live blog.)
"The iPad demands that we completely re-imagine our craft," Murdoch said. "I'm convinced that in the tablet era there's room for a fresh and robust new voice."
Apple has sold 14.8 million iPads since its tablet hit the market in April. Murdoch said he expects the tablet audience to grow to more than 50 million within the next year. It represents an opportunity to "make the business of editing and news gathering viable again," he said.
"No paper. No multi-million dollar presses. No trucks," Murdoch said. "We're passing on these savings to the reader, which is why we can offer The Daily for just 14 cents a day."
A lot of people are excited about the potential of "community journliasm" and the empowering of individual voices inherent in the new media. But old dynamics still matter. Whatever the format, there's going to be somebody who thinks he can make money from it and has the investment capability and guts to try it.
The Daily? That's the best name they could come up with?
Comments
Granted, "The Daily" is a rather boring name, but I think the format is a winner, and when it comes to making a profit, Rupert doesn't make a whole lot of mistakes.
"The Daily" is a heck of a lot better than "The Murdoch", I suppose.
Rupert doesn't make many mistakes, but that's what they said about IBM and Sears (think Prodigy), and Microsoft (think MSNBC). It sounds like Murdoch is no more in control of this product any more than AT&T was in control of tihe iPhone.
There was a blog post on DailyBeast (now there is an interesting name) that had an interesting analysis. They said for all the golly gee-whiz about the product, the achilles heel of the product was that you were still talking about a daily news product in a world where several-times-a-day news product on TV is being supplanted by the internet, and even the 24-hour "news" channels are starting to lose out to Twitter.
My initial thought was that the Apple fan base is an Al Gore constituency, and they're going to reluctant to sample paid news from the owner of Fox News Channel and the New York Daily News. That can be overcome in the long run, but in two years, I think Android is going to own the tablet market, rather than Apple. And right now, Kindle is available on just about every platform.
My second thought is that you have a national newspaper and electronic media works better with short copy: voila, it's USA Today.
Bill Ford said that bringing out the Edsel ended up being highly profitable, because when the compact car craze hit, they had lots of idle plant capacity, and they were able to get the Ford Falcon to market quickly and produce a lot of them. Maybe The Daily will turn out to be a good move for NewsCorp in that it will position them for something else that IS highly profitable. I don't think this one is it, though.