Remember when the iPad was first released and old print media companies were hailing the device as their savior?
Unfortunately most of what we readers got were straight digitalizations of existing print magazines as the publishers rushed to get something on the App Store. To make matters worse, they had the gall to charge full cover price or even more for each digital issue. Products got better over time, like Wired Magazine’s iPad offering, but pricing remained high and most of the content could still be obtained elsewhere.
Let’s be real here, how many people did they really expect to pony up $3-$6 for individual digital issues every month?
Enter News Corp.’s ‘The Daily’.
It’s the first newspaper to be iPad exclusive and be backed heavily by a large player in the media industry. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has spent over $30 million on The Daily so far and will continue to spend about half a million dollars a week keeping it going. You can say what you want about Murdoch’s political ideology, but there’s no denying the man’s track record in creating successful media businesses.
In addition to high production value, The Daily is also priced much more aggressively (and consumer friendly) than previous iPad periodicals. You can purchase a weekly subscription for 99 cents or you can get a year for $39.95. News Corp. is touting the fact that The Daily costs just 19 cents a day, which is a fairly negligble amount for people to talk themselves into. Of course, it’s competing with “free” as you can read many top newspapers from their websites at no charge.
Murdoch addressed the business model concerns in an interview with Neil Cavuto from Fox Business Network:
Cavuto: OK. So how many subscriptions would you have to get to break even, to make this worthwhile?
Murdoch: Oh, half a million would be no problem. But we’re not talking about half a million. I want to beat American Idol … I really believe that everybody in America who can afford one is going to buy a tablet.
Cavuto: But you’re competing with yourself, right? … “Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Market Watch, New York Post.
Murdoch: Fox and Friends competes with Channel 5 and Channel 7 here in the morning.
Cavuto: You’re right, You’re right. But are you worried that net (ph) you don’t gain anything from that?
Murdoch: Oh, there may be some expensive changeover. Net-net I think we will get.
So The Daily’s got the pricing model right, but what about the content inside?
Since the first two weeks of the newspaper are free for everyone due to a Verizon sponsorship, I’ve spent a little time with the past two days’ issues. It’s solidly written with all of the sections you would expect from a normal newspaper (News, Sports, Arts, Opinion, Gossip). It’s more akin to a daily version of Time magazine than, say, the New York Times in terms of content style. Obviously, since The Daily is a new “brand,” there aren’t any world renowned critics that you would go out of your way to read the paper for (yet).
Of course, existing digitally on the iPad means that The Daily has all the bells and whistles you would expect: animated photos, embedded video clips, interactive pop-up blurbs, real time poll results, 360 degree panorama viewing, real-time updated Twitter feeds, and more. Some of the more novel features include the incorporation of interactive sudoku and crossword puzzle game pages that track you on a leaderboard. You can also customize the weather and sports section to show you relevant information about your location and your favorite sports teams.
The Daily touts some sharing features as well with voice commenting, Facebook, Twitter, and Email sharing. Unfortunately, not every single page can be shared as many times I got a notice that “sorry, this article is only available in The Daily app.” When it does work, though, it provides a link to the article on the web. Quizzically, there’s no actual web site for The Daily’s articles. All of the links to articles seem to exist on an island, so to speak. Fortunately, Andy Baio from Waxy has concocted an unofficial table of contents for each of The Daily here for your perusal.
There’s still some technical issues to work out as the initial “carousel” screen acts extremely sluggish and unresponsive when flipping through pages. I’ve found that jumping around sections may also result in stuttering performance. Sometimes I’d tap a link and be waiting to see if it actually was something I could interact with. I also wish there was a more intuitive way to navigate the pages if you’ve clicked on an internal link. It unceremoniously dumps you to the linked page without an easy way to get back to what you were just reading. There is a table of contents page where you can jump to a particular section or page fairly fast, but still requires some flipping.
Would I recommend The Daily? It depends. If you’d rather read your iPad than your phone or computer for your news then it’s not a bad investment right now. I could see myself buying weekly subscriptions if I’m travelling. The price is right, but I have enough trouble as it is following my own RSS and Twitter feeds. While it’s not a perfect product right now, it’s got the right components to be a promising new player in the digital periodical game. Fix the technical issues and get some must read columnists/critics and you’ve got a suddenly very compelling 21st century newspaper.
Regardless, it’s free for the next two weeks anyway, so why not give it a shot if you’ve got an iPad?
Download The Daily for free at the iTunes App Store here.
