Rupert Murdoch Is Serious About His All-iPad Newspaper
In a piece recently published in Women’s Wear Daily, reporter John Koblin gives us the thoroughest look yet at The Daily, conceived as “a tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence.” This is a serious undertaking. Over the past three months, News Corp. has assembled a newsroom of more than 100 staffers, including such heavy hitters as former New York Post gossip columnist Richard Johnson and New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones. While the focus will be on old-school reporting, there’ll be a reasonably sized video and design staff as well, underscoring a commitment to the new medium.
While The Daily is conceived as a publication for all tablet computers, the iPad, with its 95.5 percent market share, is pretty much the only game in town at present, though Android is expected to catch up eventually. And based on WWD‘s report, Apple is very interested:
The ambitious project is yet another Murdoch experiment to get people to pay for the news they read as newspapers transition to the digital era. And he already has at least one major fan. Several sources said Apple chief Steve Jobs and Murdoch have been in conversations about the project for a while. When the project is announced, don’t be surprised if you see Steve Jobs onstage with Rupert Murdoch, welcoming The Daily to the app world.
Unlike many other tablet publications, The Daily, which is planned to launch for the public in early 2011, has the advantage of not being wildly overpriced; A month’s worth of daily content costs about the same amount as one issue of most iPad magazines. “It is expected to cost 99 cents a week, or about $4.25 a month. It will come out — as the name suggests — seven days a week.”
It’s too early to say whether it’ll be a success; if it is, it could be the bellwether for a new industry. An overtly conservative slant might not play well with early adopters, though.
Thing that will make geeks sad: Murdoch and company originally wanted to call the publication The Daily Planet (come on, even if you don’t like News Corp., you’ve got to give them points for that), but DC Comics wouldn’t let them.
(WWD via Soup. title pic via Dominic Stoughton)
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