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The Media Apple

News Corp's The Daily Is Doomed 246

Posted by CmdrTaco from the always-the-naysayers dept.
rsmiller510 writes "After all of the hype, it was surprising how much The Daily, the new News Corp. iPad daily newspaper, looks like a conventional news magazine. Ultimately, though, it's an old model in a new package and as such will fail."
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News Corp's The Daily Is Doomed More

News Corp's The Daily Is Doomed

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  • Unfortunately for News Corp, as VentureBeat reports, it's already invested an astonishing $30 million just to launch this thing, and it will cost another $500,000 a week to keep it going. While Murdoch says the right things about taking the presses and the trucks out of the equation to produce a leaner operation, I'm left wondering how many subscribers and advertisers it will take to make the initial investment back, never mind make it profitable -- especially with Apple taking half of the subscription revenues.

    News Corp has a quarterly revenue of around 8 billion dollars [google.com] but their net income has been steadily declining (duh). To risk a one time cost of thirty million followed by a weekly liability of half a million to save that hemorrhaging is a bit of non issue in my opinion. I think Murdoch could give up one of his twenty yachts and reduce his yacht insurance to offset that if he wanted to pay for The Daily out of pocket.

    The Apple comment further mystifies me. While terrible that they should lose so much money to Apple, it does give Apple incentive to see this succeed since it's designed for their product. So consider first how amazing Apple is at promoting products and how terribly backward News Corp has been as of late. It might turn out to be a paltry sum to have Apple selling their product with interest of seeing it succeed.

    Regardless, if I've learned one thing from Microsoft and their initial XBox and Zune attempts, it's that a very very wealthy company that wants to shove something down the consumer's maw will not let up until it has turned a profit. The problem is that News Corp has what, eight billion sitting around in cash? Let the blood letting begin with this pin prick!

    • It's not going to fail (Score:5, Insightful)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @01:32PM (#35092122)

      The argument seems to be that people want a proliferation of new sources. Yes I'm sure that's why fox news and CNN and MS nbc all are watched by the same people eager for a proliferation of points of view. Or why readers of Huffpo also hang on the words of powerline blog and littel green footballs. Or how the readers of Hagee and the middle easter armageddonist news sources are widely read in the Slashdot crowd.

      People do not channle surf these days. they find a few news aggregators they like, say huffpo, boingboing, andrew sullivan, fark nad slashdot, and then they follow the links one deep from there. But it's the aggregators that they come back too. A well constructued newsmag stands a chance. But if it is no more than the New york times or newsweek then it will also have plenty of competition.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by icebike ( 68054 )

        Your initial insinuation that most news readers are single sourced seems to be over-ridden by your later assertion that people want aggregation, as if you yourself have not decided which side of this argument you wish to pursue.

        Most serious news readers in the digital age surf many sites or use aggregators such as Google News, or Individurls, or any number of other 100s of news feeds [newsonfeeds.com]. Lots of people follow news on twitter these days as well, @breakingnews will give you events from all over the world an h

      • ... but where it fails is the business model. It assumes that people are willing to pay to access a single aggregation service when so many already exist free of charge. Ever wonder why music and video piracy is so rampant? Yeah, internet users like their free stuff. So given a choice between a 99 cents a week or a zero cents a week price point, most will just take the latter while wondering why the former would even exist.

        • ... but where it fails is the business model. It assumes that people are willing to pay to access a single aggregation service when so many already exist free of charge.

          Personally, it depends on the price and the actual user experience. Most of the "free" stuff makes you pay in other ways, such as painful UI decisions and ugly intrusive advertising. If the price is right I'd take a single-source that works *well* and doesn't abuse my senses. Particularly since having one does not preclude the others.

          Walking

        • Oh, apparently it's worse than that. I heard a story on the radio (long drive) about The Daily, and that news will be provided on a time schedule similar to print media, with new news coming out once a day and rare updates through the day. Now assuming this is true (I'm not signing up to find out), why would anyone go online to get stale news when they can go to a news aggregator, or twitter, or any number of online dailies around the world, and get updates by the minute, free or otherwise?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bgfay ( 5362 )

      This comment is right on the mark, but I wonder if Murdoch will wait for the money to happen. I would give this less than a year. (BTW, I have been wrong about every technology related prediction I have ever made.) Mostly I keep thinking, would I use this thing (if I had a tablet/iPad to run it on)? The answer is no, because for now the NYTimes is free. When their paywall goes up, I'll have to see how that works out and what other sources I might read. But it has been so long since I paid for news that I fi

      • if/when the paywall goes up, google the url (assuming you heard about the story or were redirected there by someone), and it will most likely let you in. You really gotta hand it to those guys, they want the google traffic, while blocking those that went to their sites in the first place.

    • "News Corp has a quarterly revenue of around 8 billion dollars [google.com] but their net income has been steadily declining (duh)."

      Ah, that's why there will be "dances with smurfs" II and III to fill up the coffers.

    • Re:Drop in the Bucket to Be Shoved Down Our Gullet (Score:4, Informative)

      by ArcherB ( 796902 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @01:56PM (#35092478) Journal

      News Corp has a quarterly revenue of around 8 billion dollars [google.com] but their net income has been steadily declining (duh).

      Has it?

      From the article titled "News Corp profit doubles despite MySpace charge" [ft.com]

      The charge on News Corp’s digital media group came after MySpace cut half its staff and marred otherwise strong results in which rising cable and broadcast television profits more than offset declines in film and digital media.

      Net income for the fiscal second quarter more than doubled to $642m, or 24 cents per share, from $254m, or 10 cents, a year earlier, when results included a $500m litigation settlement. Excluding one-offs, adjusted earnings per share rose 16 per cent from 25 cents to 29 cents.

      Although I think the rest of your comment is spot on.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sarysa ( 1089739 )

      The Apple comment further mystifies me. While terrible that they should lose so much money to Apple, it does give Apple incentive to see this succeed since it's designed for their product. So consider first how amazing Apple is at promoting products and how terribly backward News Corp has been as of late. It might turn out to be a paltry sum to have Apple selling their product with interest of seeing it succeed.

      On the contrary, I don't think Apple really cares about this News Corp deal. The 50% premium (versus their typical 30%) is probably made up of promotional fees, and perhaps to offset the revenue that Apple won't be getting via advertising. (though unlikely, as they won't take down other apps for not using iAd) Apple only needs for users to click on their iAds and purchase apps -- any apps -- regardless of where they're from.

      Unrelated, but even though I'd never use The Daily in a million years, I could see

    • Well it seems Apple gets their 30% cut for implementing the billing and subscription service as well as the content delivery. That's probably a sensible decision - rather than building such a system themselves they outsourced it to a company which has a lot of experience in that field. Also since Apple is paid by getting a cut, they pass part of the risk of the project to them.

      The price point of 99 cent / week might be the right range as well. It's something you might spend just for the coolness of it - a

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • The article incorrectly claims Apple takes half the revenue. I believe this new recurring micropayment model (maybe the most innovative feature of The Daily) will become popular with other iPad magazine apps like the Economist, Time etc... This new subscription model, so hated by free as in beer folks, is the real news. iPad's are meant to be consumer devices, and we may see that consumers embrace this new approach even if the hard core tech community does not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GWBasic ( 900357 )

      Regardless, if I've learned one thing from Microsoft and their initial XBox and Zune attempts, it's that a very very wealthy company that wants to shove something down the consumer's maw will not let up until it has turned a profit. The problem is that News Corp has what, eight billion sitting around in cash? Let the blood letting begin with this pin prick!

      Reminds me of the scene in Citizen Kane where the banker tries to lecture Kane about loosing money in his newspaper, and Kane says that at the rate he's going, he can burn until he's dead!

  • I think the most important point of the article is that the app cost $30M to develop, and will cost .5M/week to keep running. As I see it, there's pretty much no way an iPad app like this is going to consistently bring in enough money to pay off the initial investment, or even keep up with the weekly costs.

    Utterly doomed.

    • That would be true, if media only generated revenue on a subscription basis.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Tx ( 96709 )

        Well, the whole reason Murdoch has been paywalling his content is that he claims the ad revenue is so low that a tiny number of paying subscribers brings in more revenue than huge numbers of non-paying readers. So the implication of that is that the majority of the revenue raised will indeed be from the subscription charges, at least that's Murdoch's expectation. I'd imagine that's even more true given that paying subscribers will expect fewer ads than if they were reading the same content for free on the w

        • Another possibility.

          They might be able to raise the ad rates significantly because the ads are being shown to verified, paying customers, and not just any random surfer.

          In general, newspapers make 10% of revenue from subscriptions and 90% from ads. But web ads are priced much lower for a wide variety of reasons. If they can double the web ad rates, it would be a lot more realistic that they could break even on 500k subscribers.

  • I hate to be cynical, but my first reaction was that they where selling the content (rather then giving it away) and packaging it as a magazine so they could get away with it not really being news. Much like the only "news" segment on Fox News is about an hour a day and the rest is "commentary".

    • Much like the only "news" segment on Fox News is about an hour a day and the rest is "commentary"
      That isn't much different then any other news broadcast. There is only really an hour of news everyday that mass people will care about. The rest is specialized by location or peer group.

  • Shocked (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mark72005 ( 1233572 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @01:32PM (#35092140)
    Color me shocked that the writer for another website, marketing itself as a "macrosite for news", predicts the failure of another news aggregator.

  • GPS enabled (Score:4, Funny)

    by wooferhound ( 546132 ) <.moc.dnuohrefoow. .ta. .mit.> on Thursday February 03, 2011 @01:33PM (#35092144) Homepage
    I saw a TV interview with Murdoch yesterday, and he was trying to say that the most innovative thing about his iPad News service was it's GPS functionality. Supposedly no matter where you take the thing, it will give you news and weather that is relevant to the area that you are at.
    • Big freaking deal. If I live in NYC and fly to LA with a stopover in Chicago I really couldn't care less what the latest local Chicago news is or the latest local LA news is. As a resident of NY I'm much more interested in news local to NY whether I'm there or in freaking Antarctica.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dzfoo ( 772245 )

        And you get to control that. Fancy that.

        You can set your NY Zip Code as the "location" for news, and it will always give you local news to whatever locale you want.

        The point is that the news can be localized, as opposed to just getting "national" news only, even when you are at home, in NY.

                -dZ.

    • The problem with that idea is the platform. With full internet access on the iPad, why would someone want local news as brought to them by a company 1000's of miles away when its far easier to just download or create an icon link to a real local news source that is likely more current, more accurate and already familiar. It seems that Murdoch is trying to reinvent stuff that is already out there.

      • With full internet access on the iPad, why would someone want local news as brought to them by a company 1000's of miles away when its far easier to just download or create an icon link to a real local news source that is likely more current, more accurate and already familiar.

        Yep. When I was in the Bay Area I got a telemarketer calling asking if I wanted to subscribe to the New York Times. I politely told her I wasn't interested because, surprise!, I didn't live in New York. She seemed surprised that t

  • This could backfire, Steve (Score:4, Interesting)

    by linhares ( 1241614 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @01:36PM (#35092186)

    Ok mods will burn me for this... but I think that their move to charge 30% off of the dying news industry might seriously backfire. Consider this:

    i) the media industry has friends in high places;
    ii) given enough time, they will become desperate and have nothing to lose;

    To bet against Steve has been a surefire loss for a long time. But I would never fight against those with friends in high places, desperate, with nothing to lose.

    I think it's only a matter of time between the news cycle starts turning all "Apple the subject of antitrust laws?" or the classic "Should Apple be broken up?". Neither AT&T nor IBM nor MS had a good run with the state dept. Perhaps Apple is overstreching a bit too far here; I for one think the backlash isn't worth that 30% cut.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by papasui ( 567265 )
      If there's one thing people should realize by now is don't count Steve Jobs out. The dude is wildy sucessful at going against popular opinnion.

    • That requires Apple to have a monopolistic hold over a market. While right now they do on the tablet market, its only because we have only begun to see worthy Android competitors. I'm pretty sure Android on the tablet will compete with the iPad as well as Android on the phone competes with the iPhone.

      The risk for Apple isn't antitrust, its News Corp et. al. being able to get better deals on other platforms. This seems good for everyone -- its that mythical market at work.

    • This is why you start high. They make 30% while they can, then settle for 15%. It appears that they are reducing their take, to appease their customers - when in reality they are just adjusting their take down to their originally planned percentage.
    • With all due respect, I doubt if you have any experience in the publishing industry. Talk to any dead-tree publisher of newspapers, magazines, or books and ask if they'd like to have distribution (plus some promotion) handled by someone else for a mere 30%. They'd jump at it.
      • Yep. And $1 a week? That's what, half a Starbucks coffee? It's a no-brainer for the consumer IF the content is decent.

        Right now I get my news from a bunch of different electronic sources -- no one source does it all and you have to check multiple sources to get different viewpoints. I check it throughout the day. I won't pay to have a newspaper delivered mostly because I don't like the idea of physical paper, and a lot of it isn't interesting to me. If this could replace several sites then count me in.

    • I think it's only a matter of time between the news cycle starts turning all "Apple the subject of antitrust laws?" or the classic "Should Apple be broken up?". Neither AT&T nor IBM nor MS had a good run with the state dept. Perhaps Apple is overstreching a bit too far here; I for one think the backlash isn't worth that 30% cut.

      I have mod points but I'm not going to burn you for this, just tell you that you're wrong and why. Apple, the iPhone, the iPad, are not the only venue in a market. They are not t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by javaxjb ( 931766 )

      Perhaps Apple is overstreching a bit too far here; I for one think the backlash isn't worth that 30% cut.

      Some of the biggest expenses in publishing are PPP: paper, printing, and postage. For publications sold at newsstands there is also waste (unsold copies). Apple's 30% cut could easily be less than postage/delivery alone depending on the revenue model. Typically most of the revenue comes from advertising, so 30% (assuming subscription alone) could be seen as a huge bargain.

    • It's 30% of subscriber revenue.

      Newspaper business model:
      Subscriber revenue - 10%
      Ad revenue - 90%

      So Apple's cut is 3% of total revenue. Assuming that web ad revenue is anything close to print ad revenue (once they adjust rates for having verified, paying customers seeing the ads instead of just random surfers.)

  • Narrow and naive point of view (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cecom ( 698048 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @01:44PM (#35092298) Journal

    Thank god, there is Ron Miller to tell us what to think and like.

    While I am not particularly excited about The Daily specifically, Miller's assertion that "we" (who is "we"??) don't want a paid daily newspaper from a single source is very arrogant and short sighted. Many of us _do_ want a paid daily newspaper from a single source. No, that is not all that "we" read, but "we" like the reliable and consistent quality and even a little predictable bias. It is not the same as Google News. I am not bashing the latter, but to assume that everybody wants the same thing is amazingly naive.

    "20-century model" in a "21-century package" is "doomed to fail from the get go". Oh my. Such buzz-filled nonsense makes me sick. A paper book is a 16-century model, and a Kindle is the same but in a "21-century" package. Are they doomed to fail?

    Don't like "The Daily" (I personally don't) - OK - don't f*ink read it. But don't pretend you have deep all-encompassing insights about what everybody wants in the "21st century".

    •   I agree there is something way too hollow about this 'article'. Time to reverse that old adage. Now it's "never mistake malice for simple error".

    • Agreed, I currently pay for subscriptions to several newspapers and magazines (hard and soft copies). The only reason I do so is that the writing is consistently good quality. And the writers that are biased are at least biased in a consistent way (like you mentioned e.g. finance articles). I also like that they have access to high quality interesting photographs related to the stories, and most of the comments on the articles tend to be fairly well written, as having to pay seems to instantly filter out

    • Do you really want a paid single source news outlet that is pushing all the same information and viewpoints that Fox News gives you for free? The only reason people would pay is if the writing and editing were noticeably better than the other NewsCorp rags. I don't see that happening.

  • I checked it out. Its very pretty, but its just like having a pdf copy of any print magazine. If I wanted that I would just go to a newsstand a buy a magazine. There is nothing there to make you go "wow i haven't seen that before" and unfortunately for them without a wow factor this just isn't going to fly. Perhaps if it had imbedded photo galleries, interactive charts, etc, it might be more interesting but as it is, its comes across as a scanned version of a print magazine. Its just hard to believe th

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dzfoo ( 772245 )

      Perhaps if it had imbedded photo galleries, interactive charts, etc, it might be more interesting but as it is, its comes across as a scanned version of a print magazine.

      It does have embedded photo galleries and interactive charts, etc. It even has a service to read the headlines or articles to you automatically.

      Which "The Daily" are you reading?

              -dZ.

      • So here's something that I'm wondering. Does it have hyperlinks to outside sources? So far, it seems that's a no. Why then in gods name would I want to get something on the iPad when the same exact thing (a newspaper) already exists, and with none of the drawbacks (dirt cheap, no batteries needed, makes a great firestarter)?

    • Yeah, my first thought was "wait, the iPad already has a 'magazine' app" - Flipboard [appsafari.com]. That app puts web content in a magazine format and looks very easy to use. (My wife has the iPad, not me.)

      As far as the content - why would people around the country want to be locked into The Daily's content when they could aggregate content from multiple sources - including Fox or other Murdoch publications if they wish to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Above ( 100351 )

      I don't think this is quite a fair assessment. I downloaded the app to my iPad, and will try it at least for the first two free weeks.

      While I'll admit about 80% of it looks like a nice digitization of a print magazine, there are a number of aspects where they deviate. There are embedded movies and photos. No, not just still photos but 360 degree panoramas you can scroll around. The crossword and sudoku are both interactive, you can actually play them on the iPad. A couple of the advertisements have int

      • My bigger question is, why can't this sort of content just be delivered in Safari? The answer may be in the in-App charging and DRM, but if so that's a bit of a lame reason. Web sites for major magazines should look this good, on a standard browser.

        I hear you, and my guess is all the variables in browsers and formats require resource-consuming (time is money) hacks. It's a pity the standards aren't "standard".

        To The Daily's viewpoint, they have a slick-looking app that appears the same on every reader. Support costs are greatly reduced (compared to trying to support all those browsers and platforms) and there's no need to create another digital distribution network. There is no "Slashdot effect" to worry them, that's Apple's problem.

  • Content HAS to be paid for in SOME way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DavidinAla ( 639952 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @01:45PM (#35092312)
    I don't have an opinion about whether The Daily is going to make it or not. I've spent maybe 15 minutes looking at it so far (yesterday), and I'm going to give it more of a chance over the next couple of weeks while it's free. My initial thoughts weren't especially positive, but it's the content, not the business model, that didn't impress me. The content looked OK and was arranged decently, but I wasn't especially interested in most of what I saw. I didn't see that it was anything unique that I couldn't find anywhere else. If it continues to feel generic, it's going to die. However, if it dies, it's not going to be because people won't spend $1 a week on it. If content is unique and interesting, I'll easily pony up money for a week of it that's less than the cost of a soft drink these days. Some people won't pay anything, ever, for content. But I think that's shortsighted. SOMEONE has to be paid to produce content. It doesn't just magically appear from the Content Fairy. Just as people have to be paid if you want your grass cut or your hair cut or your plumbing fixed, you have to pay the people who produce content. I don't know what the best model is for paying those people, but the idea that you can forever get content for free isn't logical or reasonable. Content companies are losing money by giving away their material on the web. That is NOT going to continue forever. Anybody who understands business understand it you can't invest massive amounts of money into something not producing a return, especially while your traditional lines of business dry up. Those of us on the web have gotten a free product for years because we've been subsidized by the people who pay for printed and televised versions of the content. That subsidy won't last forever. SOMEONE has to find a way to get content producers paid. To simply declare that the future model is free is shortsighted and is a misunderstanding of what's happened on the web so far.

    • Some people won't pay anything, ever, for content. But I think that's shortsighted. SOMEONE has to be paid to produce content.

      Indeed. But, at least from me, that someone won't be Rupert Murdoch.

    • Re:Content HAS to be paid for in SOME way (Score:5, Funny)

      by narcc ( 412956 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @02:16PM (#35092854) Journal

      Those of us on the web have gotten a free product for years because we've been subsidized by the people who pay for printed and televised versions of the content. That subsidy won't last forever.

      The same thing happened to an old technology called "radio". It's biggest problem was that content produces had no way to bill their listeners. Once they bought a "radio set" they could consume all the free content they wanted!

      Sure, it enjoyed a huge boom in the 1920's, but By the 1940's, all the money dried up and radio became a distant memory.

      If my memory serves me correctly, a similar technology called "television" met the same fate in the 1960's -- To be fair, it never really stood a chance with its short-sighted "give all the content away for free" business model.

      Obscure, I know, but you can find information about them on the web ... for now ...

      • If you think the radio and television advertising model works online for content producers in the same way it worked for broadcast, you're not paying attention.
        • You're right... Google is doomed!!!
          • Do you honestly not understand the difference between those models? Or do you just enjoy missing and point and acting glib when you don't know what you're talking about? Google isn't a content creator. Google is making money from advertising, but it's not from creating the content. Those who are creating the content are losing money, in most cases.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mugnyte ( 203225 )

      What's wrong for simply asking for money? Wikipedia is going that route, public media is going that route, charities, bloggers exist like this.

      Here's the deal: News used to be performed in bulk by an "organization" but online this doesn't work the same way.

      Even the dribble of income from "fund drives" can't sustain such a traditional organization. Selling advertising isn't going to work, since click rates and sales converts just don't cut it (since selling online is itself cut-rate). Ads will stil

      • If Rupert Murdoch came to my door asking for money, I'm pretty sure I'd give him my middle finger! There are some purely listener-supported radio stations (e.g. KBOO) which I have a lot of respect for, but they have nowhere near the budget of the advertising supported ones. PBS doesn't count because it is both government subsidized and giving on-air acknowledgement to any entity that donates significant amounts money, which is effectively advertising.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      If it continues to feel generic, it's going to die.

      And yet, here we are all these years later and USAToday is still a viable paper. In fact, according to the Wikipedia article, it's neck-and-neck with the Wall Street Journal for widest distribution.

      When USAToday first came out, it was derided as a McPaper. It was called generic. The graphics were panned as simplistic. The very short articles were criticized for being like sound bites. Its quick demise was widely predicted. And, yet ...

    • Not My Problem (Re:Content HAS to be paid for in) (Score:4, Interesting)

      by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @02:55PM (#35093522)

      If these guys really believe in capitalism as purported, then it isn't my or any other person's or even Apple's problem for News Corp to make money on anything let alone an iPad app. If these guys really believe in capitalism as purported, News Corp or Murdoch may recognize a demand but have no way to capitalize on it today then it isn't our problem to solve either where both we or Apple should be free to walk away from what News Corp wants to do if they think it is a bad idea or bad deal. Failing to make money is a normal part how capitalism works were laying the blame at the feet of others is not interesting if one really believes in the virtues of capitalism.

      But this is something that has always bothered me about Murdoch. Those conservative values are near and dear and paramount and we will beat that drum and sing those praises about them...until those values work against us then it is entirely utterly unfair and not our fault. If it turns out this time the market is working against News Corp, it is a good time for News Corp should rethink their strategy instead of News Corp crying we and Apple rethink ours. It is not our or Apple's problem that News Corps sunk $30M US plus $500k US a week into something where telling us and Apple how wrong we are flies in the face of capitalism.

    • Re:Content HAS to be paid for in SOME way (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @03:12PM (#35093844)

      SOMEONE has to be paid to produce content. It doesn't just magically appear from the Content Fairy. Just as people have to be paid if you want your grass cut or your hair cut or your plumbing fixed, you have to pay the people who produce content.

      100 million free videos on YouTube and 10 millions lines of open source software appear to argue that people don't need to be payed to produce content. What is needed is methods of separating the 99.99% crap from the 0.01% of content that is actually worth consuming, despite the fact that which 0.01% is worth it varies from person to person. I'd give Google a much better chance of aggregating personalized content than Rupert Murdoch. Traditionally I would have argued that you still need to pay editors, but Wikipedia is founded on the principle that you don't, so now I'd say it's still an open issue.

  • It'll either (1) be wildly profitable (I think this is unlikely) (2) be mildly profitable (3) Barely recoup costs, or (4) Hemorrhage money.

    I think (2) or (3) are the most likely. I don't think it costs enough money to count as an hemorrhage especially considering it's modest costs compared to the company's total sales.

    But no matter what happens, the industry will learn something from the experiment, so even if it's a total disaster, it won't be a failure.

  • Isn't a little much to editorialize in the title itself? I understand the referenced article is an opinion piece, but can the editors please clarify that this isn't an event that's actually happened or been established as true, perhaps with a more appropriate title like "Blogger claims New Corp's The Daily is doomed"?

  • Right below the video, the author of the article states: "What strikes me immediately is that The Daily looks like a conventional news magazine. I don't know what I was expecting -- perhaps something new and more exciting -- but what I got was essentially a multimedia iPad version of Time."

    (1) The conventional news magazine is a winning model proven by decades of profit.
    (2) The author had no specific idea what he wanted from the product.
    (3) The author, while have no specific idea what he wants, he knew he w

  • Most bloggers generally either regurgitate news from other sources like News Corp properties while adding their own editorial spin on it or simply aggregate news from other sources. So given this, I am not in the least surprised that a blogger would claim that the daily is "doomed".

    Here is a news flash for all of you wannabe "journalist" bloggers out there, you will fade into obscurity as the "web' becomes less relevant as a news source when the traditional media jumps on the electronic daily magazine bandw

  • the problem with The Daily isn't the business model. 99c an issue or 40 bucks a year is a pretty sound pricing plan, however, what the author fails to mention is that similar plans for paid content works in other contexts, and will work for online journalism. Having to compete with free isn't difficult, it's having actual, content to want to go to from week to week to week.

    Had this been another media outlet that might be able to command money for it's content, this would be a different conversation. Howe

  • ...reading this article?

    It's written by some random blogger who doesn't appear to have credentials in analysis of journalism trends, and all he really does is prognosticate doom and gloom for a new product without (a) evidence to indicate imminent failure or (b) allowing the new product to test itself in the marketplace. I could get the same level and quality of information from reading the comments to the /. thread that reported on The Daily going live in the first place.

  • it's just going to go the way of the ipod and the iphone.

    wait, what?

  • Murdoch + Typical Apple Product User (Score:3)

    by kidcharles ( 908072 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @02:02PM (#35092596)
    I find it a little strange that Rupert Murdoch, who every self-respecting left-leaning individual loathes, would be launching an online-only newspaper exclusively available to Apple users who, in my own experience, are overwhelmingly lefty. It will probably cause some serious cognitive dissonance among liberal Steve Jobs idolizers. "It's on the iPad so I should be excited about it, but it's run by Rupert Murdoch so isn't it just iFoxNews?" (Cue head explosion.)

  • Viewers appreciate a variety of editorial stances. A single editorial source, regardless of journalist/commentator. In News Corp's world, journalism and comment are smeared together and heavily biased, as is well-known. So nobody thinks this is "all the news" from the start. Expanding on this, the very reason we enjoy the internet is the diverse sources of differing opinions, watching the sway of fact/proof overcome any information filter from a single source.

    Once viewers of the NewsCorp padz

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blair1q ( 305137 )

      Once viewers of the NewsCorp padzine find that they are "getting more" about a story by going to the web, they may realize that it doesn't require a dollar to read free information, and laden with advertisements.

      This is true of any magazine, but the point of a magazine is to have original content and more depth than your average newspaper, tv, or radio outlet can afford to develop.

      What ends up happening is that you hear about the magazine story on the tv or radio news, and get a once-over about the events from the newspaper, but when the magazine shows up in your mailbox you read the background and analysis and finally understand what's happening. Just clicking the "all 15,896 news articles" link on news.google.co

  • How can you say that? It's for the iPad! everything for the iPad is cool!. Oh. Wait. It's from NewsCorp. Everything from NewsCorp is vile and dorky. Arrgh! The cognitive dissonance! It hurts!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blair1q ( 305137 )

      That's really its only fundamental flaw.

      The Venn diagram of (people who buy Apple hardware) and (people who buy Rupert Murdoch content) does not have a very large overlap, but does have a big bubble for (people who would avoid buying Apple hardware if it came with Rupert Murdoch content).

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Instead of being apples bitch, how about releasing it as epub or as PDF so you can have EVERYONE as a reader instead of only a small segment?

  • People are still buying magazines off the newsracks. Hell, I still do it. Why? Because the content is generally richer than what I can get on the average blog-like internet infotainment site. Editorial effort will do that for you.

    So Miller has it exactly backwards. The Internet doesn't want more of what HE is selling, which is web-2.0 gibbering from unvetted writers who've had no discussions of the subject or goal with anyone else before writing the story. It wants professional-quality content, and may

  • It was doomed to fail the moment they decided it was only iPAD.

    Why limit your audience in that way?

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