Rupert Murdoch Unveils iPad Newspaper 'The Daily' At the Guggenheim

[caption id="attachment_27428" align="alignright" width="322" caption="Jon Miller, Eddie Cue, Rupert Murdoch, Jesse Angelo"][/caption] This morning FishbowlNY ventured to the Guggenheim Museum on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch unveiled "The Daily," the company's long-awaited iPad newspaper. Joining Murdoch on stage at the event were "Daily" editor Jesse Angelo, publisher Greg Clayman, News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller and Apple's Eddie Cue. We also spotted News Corp. COO Chase Carey and one of Murdoch's sons, James Murdoch, in the crowd. Playing around with "The Daily" you get a sense of just how much time, effort and money went into producing it. It looks slick, and the content is strong. Murdoch says the company spent $30 million to develop it, and operational costs will run around $500,000 a week, as a result, he said the bar for "success" will be quite low. As rumored, it will cost $0.99 a week, or $39.99 a year, with Apple's new subscription billing system. You can try it out for free for two weeks starting today, with Verizon on board as the launch sponsor. So far the ads are almost as impressive as the content. Miller says they are thinking up creative ways to feature advertising, with an emphasis on interactivity. Not surprising, considering it is a Murdoch paper, the editorial page skews to the right, or as Angelo explained: "In terms of our editorial page, at the highest level, we are patriotic, we love America, we are saying what we think is right for this country, we believe in free ideas, free people." Of course, the editorial pages and news pages are separate, and the news content itself is compelling, and did not appear to have any particular bias. If there is a bias, it is towards the gimmick, such as the use of 360 degree photos. But even the gimmicks were interesting. As Murdoch explained: "Our challenge was to take the best of traditional journalism, competitive, shoe-leather reporting, good editing, a skeptical eye, and combine it with the best of contemporary technology." Will it catch on with users? We will have to wait and see. We will have more on "The Daily" later at WebNewser, and here on FishbowlNY.

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Rupert Murdoch Unveils iPad Newspaper 'The Daily' At the Guggenheim

Alex Weprin

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Alex Weprin