'The Daily' Is Dead, Long Live 'The Daily'

The Daily is dead. Long Live The Daily. Yes, after nearly two years, News Corp. has killed its tablet-only newspaper The Daily. It is hard to believe now, but at the time there was quite a bit of optimism around the product. As a public service, FishbowlNY looks back at the good, the bad and the ugly... The Wrap: I'm a Mac obsessive. My iPhone goes everywhere I do, I'm typing this on a MacBook Air, and, full disclosure, I even have some stock in the company. But I never got the iPad, or had the slightest interest in owning one. But I get it now. Thanks to The Daily. Daily sister publication The Wall Street Journal: Michael Gartenberg, an analyst a Gartner Inc., IT -1.48% said plus points are the low price and ability to share articles through other digital services, like Facebook, Twitter and email. He said such features have been lacking in earlier iPad versions of publications. "The whole project is extremely challenging," he said, although "it points the way to the future." Fox News Channel at the time broke into coverage of the uprising in Egypt to cover the announcement. The Guardian: At 99¢ a week, the Daily is going to have to sell a lot of copies if it's to turn an operating profit, let alone recoup the $30m that News Corp has spent developing it. Would I buy it? The answer is probably yes, because the price is so low that it's almost nothing. But whether the Daily is good enough to convince the hundreds of thousands of subscribers it needs to break even is another matter. Mashable: The writing also lacks a consistency in quality and a cohesive editorial voice. Molly Young’s unauthoritative mandate to “pick stripes” in the Arts & Life section feels worlds — not a handful of swipes — away from Reihan Salam’s on virtual entertainment; one belongs in Lucky, the other could have appeared, possibly, in the “Talk of the Town” section in The New Yorker. FishbowlNY (editor's note: man, does my analysis look silly in hindsight): 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... 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. The Wordyard: My prediction: If they’re pragmatists about the Web, they’ve got a chance — they can adapt and evolve their product so it’s a little more up to date, less hermetic and more inclusive of the public that lives online today. But if they’re ideologues — if they really believe that what is essentially a magazine “pasted on a screen” is the future of journalism — then they’re in deep trouble, and the Daily will only be Murdoch’s latest and most spectacular digital money-sink. PC Mag: The resulting publication has the aesthetics and readability of a magazine, the daily frequency of a newspaper, and plenty of extras to keep readers engaged. It's not without faults—there are some small design issues and also the question of whether you want to pay for news that can be found elsewhere for free—but The Daily delivers an excellent, packaged newsreading experience with a focus on fresh content that is currently one of the best on the iPad. The prescient Daily Telegraph: I've had a few hours with The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper. One thought strikes me above all others: if this is the best that journalism's brightest brains can do, given a huge budget and input from Apple itself then we're in worse trouble than I thought.

Fishbowl

'The Daily' Is Dead, Long Live 'The Daily'

Alex Weprin

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Alex Weprin