Murdoch to launch The Daily, an iPad-only newspaper

November 22, 2010 By Jeffrey Van Camp

Rupert Murdoch is planning to open an iPad-only newspaper called The Daily. It will have 100 staff and cost $.99 a week.

The iPad is about to be Murdoched. The News Corp. CEO who hates the free Internet is planning an iPad newspaper, reports WWD. Called “The Daily,” the digital paper will cost $.99 a week ($4.25 per month) and have a newsroom of 100+ staff. The new paper will cover the country and break stories like any national news outlet, though The Daily will not have foreign correspondents or any staff in Washington D.C. This report seems to coincide with a story back in August pointing toward a new digital newspaper from News Corp.

“There are three managing editors,” reports John Koblin of WWD Media. “Mike Nizza, a veteran of The New York Times, AOL News and The Atlantic; Steve Alperin, a producer at ABC News, and Pete Picton, an online editor at The Sun in the U.K. Alperin’s TV experience gives a hint to a valuable part of the newsroom: In addition to journalists, there will be plenty of people producing videos. Also, there will be lots of design staff.”

The paper should go into beta by Christmas and go public in early 2011.

On the Internet, but off

While it is difficult to see people paying for newspapers in this day and age, News Corp. and The New York Times have seen some success with online subscriptions. The key to this new paper, however, will be its exclusivity to the iPad and other tablet devices. Though it’s strange to imagine, The Daily, may be a digital news outlet that never has a standard website. It may live entirely in the app space, with no pages searchable by Google or other search engines.

The news is both exciting and frightening. It’s great to see a new newspaper opening up in this climate, but scary to think that it might start a trend where users are forced to subscribe to every piece of media they consume. With the growth of apps, the Internet itself seems to be fragmenting into a free PC world and a segmented paid land.

Would you pay for a daily paper delivered to your iPad?

Showing 13 comments

PaulCJr at 9:24pm 1st December 2010 I would love to see online news paper being really interactive. I would love to see images of people moving and shifting. Kind of like those paper on the Harry Potter movies, that would be cool. The Daily will just be one of the many papers that will launch an ipad and android tablet paper. I will subscribe if they are good.
JettG1 at 10:11am 22nd November 2010 Mudoch's DAILY is going to be just that....a once a day online newspaper ....just like a traditional newspaper So if a late breaking story continually updates....you are going to have to go to the free online sources to get the latest news. Or if a story breaks after publication you have to wait 24 hours to find out about it????????
norris hall at 9:01am 22nd November 2010 Good luck!!! The only way you can make money out of onlline news is to offer it free and sell ads to advertisers Even hardcover newspapers rely on this model. People just aren't going to pay for news when it's being offered for free by the rest of the world's newspapers. Besides...if Murdoc is going cheap with a staff of 100 (which is less than most small local TV stations) That means it's going to basically steal most of it's news from other online sources. With that small of a staff most of them are going to be websesigners Why pay for that???? Besides, where best to find out what's going on in Bangkok than to read the Bangkok post online. They actually have correspondents in Bangkok
naksuthin at 8:48am 22nd November 2010 Why would I pay for something I can get for free? I can get all the news I need on Google News... Plus if Murdoc isn't going to have any foreign correspondents that means his "foreign news" is going to to be rip off's from other internet foreign newspapers Want to find out what's gohg on in Thailand. Just go to www.bangkokpost.com. and read all the latest news straight from Bangkok. Murdoc is going to have to put "boots on the ground" if he thinks he's going to sell "news" You don't run a worldwide news service on 100 employees
Bill Crest at 8:45am 22nd November 2010 "quality news information" and "real reporting and journalism"....REALLY????? From the owner of Fox "News"...you've got to be kidding!!
Chi at 8:38am 22nd November 2010 Sure I would pay for quality news information.
Michael Whitesell at 8:35am 22nd November 2010 really can't see paying for news with so much free news content available... and just because you paid for it, isn't going to make it any more or less bias...
smackgod at 8:31am 22nd November 2010 That's great except what is the value add here for your .99 per week? A name like the Daily suggests a rehashing of the the same news content coming off the feeds from AP and reuters. Are their reporters planning to put their own unique spin on it? I just don't get a sense of what the target market is and how this paper would compete against all the free resources currently out there.
Alex B. at 8:24am 22nd November 2010 You know, Mr. Murdoch is NOT holding a gun to your head forcing you to subscribe to and / or read his companies anything.
Hans at 8:19am 22nd November 2010 Of course I'd pay, because real reporting and journalism isn't free and democracy doesn't work without it. Content aggregation is not reporting. Sometimes the message is the message, regardless of the medium.
Phebe at 7:54am 22nd November 2010 Sure, works for me. Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal, to which I subscribe in three venues, and his ownership has improved it. I'll subscribe as soon as he puts up his iPad "paper." Right now the best news app for the iPad is Fluent News, IMO.
Max at 7:50am 22nd November 2010 No more Ipad for me if Murdoched.
1. johnny at 9:43am 22nd November 2010 well, let's just think about this for a second, fox news which is owned by murdoch's news corp is shockingly extremely right wing, think tea baggers, so this new staff of 100+ will be decidedly right wing also. would i pay for more brainwashing biased news? no thank you. let's not forget, unlike other news outlets, fox contributed $1 million towards the republican party.