News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch introduced a news publication tailored specifically for Apple Inc.’s iPad, a bid to expand his media empire with a new business model for delivering content digitally.
Called the Daily, the publication will cost 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year, the companies said at a news conference in New York today. Apple unveiled a subscription payment system for the Daily and said it will soon be available for other publishers…
“The iPad demands that we completely reimagine our craft,” Murdoch said at the event. “I’m convinced that in the tablet era there’s room for a fresh and robust new voice…”
Murdoch developed the Daily after Apple demonstrated there’s a market for tablets, which blend the functionality of a touch-screen smartphone with a notebook computer. He said News Corp. has spent $30 million to get the publication off the ground and that it will cost about $500,000 a week to operate…
Cue said a subscription system for other publishers will be announced “very soon.” With the Daily, users can pay the 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year through an iTunes account.
You can try the online paper for these first couple of weeks for free – via a subsidy from Verizon. An advertising troll awaits. In any case, the app is free.
Fair attempt. What success (or lack of it) will show is the level of snobbishness of iPad audience. Success of paid app that provides the same info freely available on the ‘net (even if it is digested by finer journalistic minds) lies in snobbery and fashion only. Nix those and it is pointless. However, there are fashionable snobs out there… question is how many of them are on iPad?
>. However, there are fashionable snobs out there… question is how many of them are on iPad?
All of them! The question is how many of the fashionable snobs want to read Fox news ?
My thoughts exactly #1
so its like flipboard you pay for? good luck old man!
Found a few disappointments so far. It has a section called Boxes & Briefs. I has like 3 line news stories that tell you the main story but you can’t tap it for more details. Like they have one about London’s Luton airport using 3-d Hologram telling people what to do ahead of security. But that’s it no more detail. Had to do a Google search and found a video from the BBC on them that would have been nice to have been linked to.
Still reviewing
Well, I checked it out and it seems to have the same problems all of the others before it had. Too much flash and ‘coolness’ and not enough real content.
Sure some of the stories we interesting but most were not.
To me it appeared more like a glossy magazine you see in the super market, not a daily news source.
Personally, I’m getting tired of all the tries at changing things that end up looking like the previous tries. I would like one company to say everyone can make it pretty we are going to supply content!
For $30 million I hope Murdoch go a lot of lap dances…
Check it out? Weeeeeell….no.
A teensy irrelevant detail barely mentioned by the (U.S.) reviewers is that the app is not available to any of us ‘Danged Ferners!’ Too many State Secrets, for American eyes only, I guess.
The net is a global market. It is laughable that Murdoch releases a publication touted as keeping up with the times, revolutionary, etc. and then ties it to a subset of the marketplace.
I would have looked if I could, but it is obvious the 19th century business model still lives in Mr Murdoch…
An iPad is to nice a gadget to line bird/bunny cages how does Murdoch expect this to payoff?
I like tablets as much as the next guy. But all this nonsense about paying hard earned money for apps just annoys me to hell. Everything you need is available for free on the Internet.
Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch: An ideal couple.
How these guys didn’t get hooked up a long time ago is beyond me.
Yesterday’s “news” today, delivered to your reader.
#30,000,000 for a Newsweek clone? Why not just buy the real thing for about a buck ninety eight?
“The iPad demands that we completely reimagine our craft,”
And here I thought it was the dying newspapers that demanded the re-imagination.
I so hope there is way to track the usage of “The Daily” like the Audit Bureau of Circulation. At $0.99 a week News Corp will need half a million subscribers just to break even, never mind recoup the $30 million for startup.
Also curious, is it just content or is it like Hulu Plus where you pay and still get served ads?
http://www.drudgereport.com/
They don’t charge.
dusanmal said in #1 something about a snob factor.
That shift in market appeal will likely be a factor in News Corp. shifting their reporting from a “Fox News style of reporting to a CNN/NY Times style of reporting.
If Rupe wants to make go of The Daily he’ll have to play to the demographic of people who actually own iPads.
That’s currently a different bunch from those who pick up The New York Post for 25 cents on their way to the factory and back.
I wonder if Murdoch was tempted to call it the Daily Planet?
Somewhere around 25-30 years ago, a place where I worked took the WSJ and I used to look through it occasionally during my morning break for stories on what was happening in the computer business. Of course, that was before the editorial section went totally batshit crazy and jumped somewhere to the far right of Marathon Oil. Haven’t looked at it lately — wonder if they still cover business? Maybe I’ll see if the local library carries it and have a glance.
They have a chance if they actually cover business news in such a way that business men and women will be able to stand reading it on their iPads.
I wouldn’t let that POS “news’ near my iPAD.
I do give Fox credit for producing some great TV programs however.
#2 Nobody,
“The question is how many of the fashionable snobs want to read Fox news?”
The real question is Are fashionable snobs capable of reading?
All the news you can get for free for a subscription to make Apple and Murdoch richer! I’ll pass.
As the viewership at MSMBC and CNN continue to drop, there is a chance Murdoch could come in 2nd place against Fox News.
jbenson2, how ignorant are you?
Murdoch is Fox News.
And the stupid FOX “News” viewers, and getting stoopider, even know how to use an iPad? Not likely.
Well what do you know. A tabloid on a tablet. They spent $30 million, just to remove “New York” from the title? So I suspect it’s not that much different from most print newspapers and magazines. And you still have to follow an article thru five or six pages of advertising. And will articles actually be linked page by page? Or will one have to scan the whole journal, to find where the rest of it is hiding?
I wouldn’t invest in any iPad transcribe journal or paper, if they kept doing all the same old tricks of burying the news in the ads.