# The Murdoch/Apple iPad creation The Daily. It's shit, unsurprisingly



## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

Murdoch has sunk $30 million into this project so far, and the iPad only newspaper The Daily is priced at $0.99 per week or $39.99 per year.

And what do you get? A big slab of glossy, news-lite drivel.

Fuck you Murdoch and fuck subscription-only, device-specific, corporate synergetic newspapers.



> The Daily is a beautiful, multimedia-rich daily magazine. But I expected more from a product with such an enormous budget, produced in collaboration with Apple’s own developer team. Still, I could have forgiven all had the quality of the content itself been better, if it had offered one item I couldn’t have found for free, and more intelligently written, on the web.


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## mancboy (Feb 3, 2011)

I imagined it was going to be like Metro, but even worse. Sounds like it.

Where's the text you quoted taken from?


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## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

Sorry, I missed out the link. And to make up for it, here's a screen grab too.







http://mashable.com/2011/02/02/the-daily-review/#8817-3


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## mancboy (Feb 3, 2011)

Never looked at mashable before. Thanks.

e2a, yeah the Natalie Portman 'article' screen grab on the link looks fucking awful


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## Kanda (Feb 3, 2011)

Don't subscribe to it then.

Hold on, you don't even own an iPad. Why are you getting so het up about it???


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## g force (Feb 3, 2011)

Nah he's right it's utter drivel. "compiling stories from hundreds of journalists..." which if true shows have utterly fucked journalism is. Looks nice but dear god it's news content is seriously below par. Makes Metro look like The Atlantic at times.


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## Kanda (Feb 3, 2011)

Of course it's gonna be drivel.

but it's not even available for download in the UK yet and we have a thread slating it....


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## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

Kanda said:


> Don't subscribe to it then.
> 
> Hold on, you don't even own an iPad. Why are you getting so het up about it???


You don't think something that was being heralded as the future of newspaper media shouldn't be of interest, especially when it involves Murdoch's millions and News Corp and the biggest tech company on the plamet??

Still, the rag is thankfully a bag of total shit by all accounts:



> 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.
> 
> The Daily represents a complete failure of imagination. It’s not a ‘native’ iPad experience at all, it’s a news magazine torn up and stuffed, page-by-page onto the iPad screen. After months of waiting to see Rupert Murdoch’s grand vision for this new medium, it turns out he wants to sell us the old vision but with a couple of videos thrown in...
> 
> ...


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## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

Kanda said:


> Of course it's gonna be drivel.
> 
> but it's not even available for download in the UK yet and we have a thread slating it....


Why on earth shouldn't we be discussing the critical reaction to what has been touted as the "future of newspapers"?

I really can't see what your objection is here. It's a big news story that has been covered globally.


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## Kanda (Feb 3, 2011)

editor said:


> You don't think something that was being heralded as the future of newspaper media shouldn't be of interest, especially when it involves Murdoch's millions and News Corp and the biggest tech company on the plamet??
> 
> Still, the rag is thankfully a bag of total shit by all accounts:


 
No, not really. Bound to be shit.


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## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

Kanda said:


> No, not really. Bound to be shit.


Your attempt to stifle and belittle all discussion here is really rather weird, to be honest. 

If the topic isn't of interest to you then jog on, but judging by the column inches being generated elsewhere, it's clearly a very big tech story, and guess what? This is the tech forum!


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## Kanda (Feb 3, 2011)

Stifle and belittle ALL discussion here??? 

Hilarious.


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## Crispy (Feb 3, 2011)

What a waste of money. Why bother, when I already have a fantastic news aggregator app that formats the headlines like a newspaper and draws from a multitude of non-news corp sources.

Kanda-ed, your beef is tiring, leave it


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## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

Anyway, back on topic, the Guardian has a piece about Murdoch's huge ambitions for this to succeed:



> As ever, Murdoch has dismissed the naysayers with a flick of his ample cheque book. He has sunk $30m (£19m) into developing the Daily and said it would cost $26m a year to cover its costs, including those of 100 staff. He is targeting the 50*million people expected to own an iPad by the end of next year. Analysts project that he can cover costs if 2% of them could be persuaded to subscribe to the Daily at 99 cents a week – no mean task, considering that there are already 9,000 other news apps for the iPad on the market. "It will all come down to content," said Alan Mutter, blogger and former editor of the Chicago Daily News. "He's going to have to make something very compelling to get people to pay."
> 
> The first edition of the Daily had a conventional news front on Egypt under the headline "Falling Pharaoh". It gave high billing to its gossip section, with features on Natalie Portman and Rihanna, and a column by Richard Johnson, formerly the doyen of the Page Six gossip column of the New York Post. It also showcased several digital bells and whistles, including photographs that can be scanned through 360 degrees, a "carousel" of stories that can be spun with a finger, and stories that you can listen to like a radio.
> 
> ...


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## ovaltina (Feb 3, 2011)

Crispy said:


> What a waste of money. Why bother, when I already have a fantastic news aggregator app that formats the headlines like a newspaper and draws from a multitude of non-news corp sources.


 
It's a pretty poor strategy. An app that generates revenue from advertising, with functionality and scope for sales that a web page can't offer, could be a real winner for newspapers like the Sun. But asking people to pay 99c for something they can get elsewhere free won't work.

I think Murdoch has lost his touch. Remember thelondonpaper? One minute he's flooding London with freebies, the next there's no place for free content and we're all supposed to pay for 'journalism' behind paywalls and via paid apps.


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## skyscraper101 (Feb 3, 2011)

I think the story is interesting.

This ipad newspaper looks total fail anyway. If I want to read a paper with an iPad I'd rather read a digital form of the ones I can get here locally.

I don't know what the plans are for launching this in the UK or if they'll localise the content but it'll take a lot to get me to change reading the UK press to switch to something made out of the US.


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## King Biscuit Time (Feb 3, 2011)

ovaltina said:


> I think Murdoch has lost his touch. Remember thelondonpaper? One minute he's flooding London with freebies, the next there's no place for free content and we're all supposed to pay for 'journalism' behind paywalls and via paid apps.



Trouble is, he can afford to throw plenty of shit at a wall to see what sticks.


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## DotCommunist (Feb 3, 2011)

must be galling for the old cunt to realise that after he trashed the print unions and helped undermine journalistic standards in mainstream media completely, technology has rendered his commie hatred irrelevant and we are all reading shit for free anyway. Fuck him.


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## Kanda (Feb 3, 2011)

The FT app is very good. That's been around since release pretty much.


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## ovaltina (Feb 3, 2011)

Kanda said:


> The FT app is very good. That's been around since release pretty much.


 
More of a niche market though isn't it... Murdoch's peddling the same sleb crap that you get everywhere for free.


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## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> must be galling for the old cunt to realise that after he trashed the print unions and helped undermine journalistic standards in mainstream media completely, technology has rendered his commie hatred irrelevant and we are all reading shit for free anyway. Fuck him.


Amen to that.


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## editor (Feb 3, 2011)

Kanda said:


> The FT app is very good. That's been around since release pretty much.


The big difference is that Murdoch's new rag can _only_ be read by iPad owners paying a subscription, whereas FT content can be read across many different formats and mediums, including traditional print.

Murdoch is hoping that his subscription-only digital model is the one that all newspaper publishers will follow and that's why this story is of such interest.


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## Kid_Eternity (Feb 3, 2011)

I didn't expect the writing or content to be much but I did expect a Flipboard style experience in terms of layouts, visuals and navigation. This is terrible, that pseudo cover flow navigation is stuttery and looks dated. Surprised Apple let themselves be so associated with this...


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## sunnysidedown (Feb 3, 2011)

Crispy said:


> What a waste of money. Why bother, when I already have a fantastic news aggregator app that formats the headlines like a newspaper and draws from a multitude of non-news corp sources.


 
And what is this app you speak of?


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## DrRingDing (Feb 4, 2011)

It's shit, of course it is. But, with the expensive marketing it'll be successful.

It as to be.


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## Kid_Eternity (Feb 4, 2011)

sunnysidedown said:


> And what is this app you speak of?


 
Flipboard?


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Feb 4, 2011)

I don't understand what advantage this gives over all the free services/apps out there? Why should I pay for something when I can get something better free?


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## Crispy (Feb 4, 2011)

Kid_Eternity said:


> Flipboard?


 
Yep


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## g force (Feb 4, 2011)

G_S said:


> I don't understand what advantage this gives over all the free services/apps out there? Why should I pay for something when I can get something better free?


 
Seems to be entirely the issue Murdoch has missed. Or indeed pay for decent journalism through other apps


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## skyscraper101 (Apr 21, 2011)

So does anybody actually read this 'newspaper'? I haven't heard mention of it since February.


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## Kid_Eternity (Apr 21, 2011)

Apparently the activity has seriously dropped off going by the number of tweets and facebook shares...


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## skyscraper101 (Apr 21, 2011)

It would be funny if it went tits up, myspace style.


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## Kid_Eternity (Apr 21, 2011)

Looks to me that it's on course for that already...


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## Frankie Jack (Apr 21, 2011)

When the Times went PPV I fucked it off.. Pay for bigoted biased Murdoch news.. Not a chance.


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## Apathy (Apr 21, 2011)

Power crazy murdoch has lost the fucking plot.  Insistent that people should pay for the news media they get from the net even tho its doing nicely as it is, completely free.  Talk about someone with a huge bee in his bonnet, what a fuckin nob! what kind of fuckin nob end actually pays for it??


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## editor (Mar 11, 2012)

It's been a flop. LOL.



> Hopes that last Christmas would see a sudden jump in iPad newspaper subscriptions have not quite been fulfilled. The Times and Sunday Times only signed up about 3,000 new digital subscribers in December to add to the declared total of 119,000 for the Times. Although the near-120,000 figure is decent progress for the paywall effort, the fact remains that movement to a larger number, that might lead to sustainable print-replacing revenues, is going to be slow. No wonder, then, that News International, a great believer in cut-price newspapers, is doubling the price to £4 a week: the £12.5m that 120,000 were generating at the lower rate is not a sustainable sum for papers where the editorial budget is more like £100m a year.
> 
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/11/apple-twitter-digital-revolution


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## pinkmonkey (Mar 11, 2012)

One thng I dont get is to buy paid for newspaper apps when you can just read the website on your ipad.  I mean, its not like it's not gonna work.


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## Kid_Eternity (Mar 11, 2012)

I used to pay for the Guardian app as syncing articles for offline reads on the tube was very useful.

No surprise The Daily has tanked, Murdoch doesn't get the net...


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## editor (Mar 11, 2012)

I use the unofficial Guardian Lite app on my Android: it downloads all the Guardian articles in text only format in *seconds* so I can read them on the tube.


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## elbows (Mar 11, 2012)

I suspect this stuff goes well beyond Murdoch or newspapers. I predict some great big horrible crunch at some point. An event where faith in the idea that all the revenues that have eroded due to audience fragmentation and the internet/digital will somehow magically reappear to the same extent in the new digital way, is lost. Combine this will a possible lag in hardware sales due to an abundance of devices that meet peoples needs well enough that they delay upgrading for longer than has been the case in recent times, and a failure of highly-valued internet properties such as Facebook to deliver revenues that match their alleged worth, and it could be quite the crash.

Of course it isn't clear whether all these things will totally fail within the same time period, but the potential is there I think, and it could be very ugly if its combined with the 'austerity' and wider economic problems.

I find it rather interesting as there are so many big factors at play. The fragmentation of audiences is a real big thing when it comes to the economic model of the media, and there have not yet been enough examples of entities learning how to monetize their smaller niche audiences to the extent necessary to stay in the black. This phenomenon is amplified by how used to getting a variety of things either for free or for an exceedingly low price people have become, how little digital stuff can be valued, how much people can expect it to be free because it has been free in the past. 'Re-educating' them will be a challenge.

Take some of these ideas to an extreme, and you may even start wondering about things such as specialisation & profession. Because for all of the potential for the internet to enable people to work in smaller groups with less resources, serving a smaller but more involved and passionate audience, its not yet been sufficiently demonstrated that this stuff is sustainable even in the medium sized audience middle-ground areas, let alone the 'long tail' small niche areas. So in some ways I believe the internet is actually a better fit for a world where far less people are in the profession of providing news, entertainment,etc. Picture instead a world where people spend some hours per day doing a more basic & physically/materially productive form of work, and then do their creative/entertainment/informing stuff more for the love than the money, using their spare time. OK this is an extreme example, but its based on some real issues, especially as the potential for the internet to vastly reduce the number of required middlemen has long been apparent, no matter how many new middle men come along in the form of service providers who think they are going to be able to make silly money.


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## elbows (Mar 11, 2012)

Or to put it another way, one of the many great imbalances of this era, stretching back a pretty long time now, has been that a few people make it really huge and make silly silly money, some others manage to make a living but its quite the slog, and a great bulk don't make enough to make ends meet and are forced to give up on this stuff as a means to support oneself.

The internet offered a hope of rebalancing this, a hope that was rather hyped up during certain eras, e.g. the 'long-tail' still that was in vogue when everyone started wanting about blogging. Has it actually happened? Not really. There are success stories but not in larger quantity than happened in the old days when a person had to get their big break via an established media giant. 

Its not that much different with the rise in casual mobile gaming, for every developer success story such as Angry Birds, there are a hell of a lot of failures. And how many impressive tales of success like Angry Birds have their been?

Now some of this can be explained by the fact that the established media, publishers etc remain more powerful than the overhyped 'mp3 will kill all you suits' vision suggested. This is partly because you have new replacement behemoths to take over the role, e.g. Apples iTunes as the hurdle instead of record company (or as well as). But also because despite the audience fragmentation issue, traditional big media still has a publicity machine that is so much more powerful than anything the social aspects of the web can achieve. Sure things can go viral, but this phenomenon is not a daily occurrence, and often happens to bits of creative entertainment that have no obvious way of being intently magnetised by this new found fame.

What about the middle ground? You'd think there should be enough audiences out there to make it a place to earn a living, and all manner of costs of distribution have fallen immensely. Yet somehow this stuff hasn't burst into life in a way that offers a career for more creative types than the corporate-dominated past did. And so once more we are left wondering whether the immense scale of success that the mass media offered for so long, has scrambled our expectations. Perhaps its an anomaly that cannot easily be repeated, and opening it up to more people makes it evaporate, the entire pie shrinks rather than everyone getting a fair slice of that big ol pie.


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## Hocus Eye. (Mar 11, 2012)

I use a free app called World News on my phone - not tablet. It lets you add any English language newspaper you want from all the world, to its menu. I have several UK papers on there including the tablets so that I can skim through the headlines and see who is thinking what. Of course Murdoch's Times, although it can be added just jumps to a request for a subscription. I even read my local newspaper on there and the local newspaper of the area that I hail from so as to keep up with 'home' news.


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## Lo Siento. (Mar 11, 2012)

looks like an inflight magazine...


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## FridgeMagnet (Mar 11, 2012)

pinkmonkey said:


> One thng I dont get is to buy paid for newspaper apps when you can just read the website on your ipad.  I mean, its not like it's not gonna work.


Well, you can't for the (Sunday) Times. There's a third option, of course, which is just not reading them at all - this seems an increasingly popular one.


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## elbows (Mar 11, 2012)

FridgeMagnet said:


> Well, you can't for the (Sunday) Times. There's a third option, of course, which is just not reading them at all - this seems an increasingly popular one.


 
Yep. A much shorter version of my above posts could be 'just think how many more of the words we read these days come from people who aren't being paid to write them'.

Yes u75 has done its bit to stick one in the eye of Murdoch & friends.


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## Lo Siento. (Mar 11, 2012)

the problem with the internet as a market is the whatever you're selling, someone, somewhere is probably giving it away


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## FridgeMagnet (Mar 11, 2012)

Lo Siento. said:


> the problem with the internet as a market is the whatever you're selling, someone, somewhere is probably giving it away


If what you're selling is "rewrites of AP and Reuters feeds", "divvy overprivileged people being self-obsessed" and "editorials stating the point of view of media bosses" then certainly.


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## elbows (Mar 11, 2012)

FridgeMagnet said:


> If what you're selling is "rewrites of AP and Reuters feeds", "divvy overprivileged people being self-obsessed" and "editorials stating the point of view of media bosses" then certainly.


 
Which tends to lead to the question, 'so what do we consume on the net for free now that we might actually value enough to pay for in future'?

In this regard I got quite depressed because the long-tail did not offer me the quality alternatives I was hoping for. It used to be possible for some people to imagine that all manner of creative talents were lurking out there, but never made it through the system. Now we have different systems and yet I don't notice an increase in the trickle of quality talent. I notice glimmers of talent that isn't being focussed into a project of value, little nuggets of quality wisdom, art etc that have to be artfully plucked out of a much bigger pool of mediocrity. But the technology hasn't actually found a way of skimming off this creme yet, of turning tiny chunks of effort by clued up people into the sort of finished quality product we are looking for. I wonder if some sort of revolution in collaboration could be the solution. But its rather unclear as to whether technological tools can solve this one, many barriers to collaboration involve the human ego etc and it would be quite something to navigate past that issue, hell we could almost solve politics and economics at the same time if we did.


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## FridgeMagnet (Mar 11, 2012)

I see plenty of creative stuff distributed and publicised via the net that I'd never have seen ten years ago. It's not in the form of newspapers though.


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## likesfish (Mar 12, 2012)

I find magazine/newspapers on my iPad deeply annoying.


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## editor (Dec 3, 2012)

skyscraper101 said:


> It would be funny if it went tits up, myspace style.


It has. It's proved a big useless Murdoch flop.  

http://www.wirefresh.com/murdochs-i...daily-shuts-down-after-proving-a-costly-flop/


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## skyscraper101 (Dec 3, 2012)

editor said:


> It has. It's proved a big useless Murdoch flop.
> 
> http://www.wirefresh.com/murdochs-i...daily-shuts-down-after-proving-a-costly-flop/


 
Murdoch: finger on the pulse of today. Not.


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## skyscraper101 (Dec 3, 2012)

Good day to bury bad newspapers.


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## Kid_Eternity (Dec 3, 2012)

Shit app is shit.


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## jannerboyuk (Dec 3, 2012)

likesfish said:


> I find magazine/newspapers on my iPad deeply annoying.


Really? How so? I read 2000ad, sfx and a rugby paper so far and enjoy it. Which bits annoy? Personally I pay because each of these things could easily go tits up without revenue and I rather that didn't happen


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## likesfish (Dec 3, 2012)

i just find they are deeply annoying I can see what they are trying to do but it just ends up annoying me.
 I can read ebooks and webcomics no problems just find magazines and newspapers deeply annoying.


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## Kid_Eternity (Dec 3, 2012)

I've yet to find a newspaper or magazine that has as intuitive and pleasing a reading experience as Flipboard. Until then I'm not interested in digital copies of that type...


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## editor (Dec 4, 2012)

If Murdoch and Apple's dream of a closed iPad-only newspaper subscription model had taken off like they'd hoped, we'd be heading for a fresh world of shit.


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## stuff_it (Dec 4, 2012)

So people are paying for advertising? Lol.


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## Gingerman (Dec 4, 2012)

editor said:


> It has. It's proved a big useless Murdoch flop.
> 
> http://www.wirefresh.com/murdochs-i...daily-shuts-down-after-proving-a-costly-flop/


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## elbows (Dec 4, 2012)

editor said:


> If Murdoch and Apple's dream of a closed iPad-only newspaper subscription model had taken off like they'd hoped, we'd be heading for a fresh world of shit.


 
They didnt want to keep it iPad only, indeed there is an android version for certain tablets but only via Verizon. Murdochs dream was all about subscriptions and pay-walls, with platform limitations just being a transitory phenomenon. 

Anyway I am most amused but not terribly surprised by its failure, it will take more than wishful thinking and an existing media empire to figure out how to make publications profitable into the future.


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## editor (Dec 4, 2012)

elbows said:


> They didnt want to keep it iPad only, indeed there is an android version for certain tablets but only via Verizon.


That was an exclusive one-off deal with Verizon.


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## editor (Dec 4, 2012)

Good piece about why it failed...


> It was too expensive. It lacked editorial focus. And for a digital publication, it was strangely cut off from the Internet. That's the obituary being written in real time through posts, tweets and online chats about The Daily, the first-of-its-kind iPad newspaper that is being shut down this month...
> 
> "Stories weren't widely shared or widely known," says Butterworth [columnist]. "It felt like I was writing into the void."
> 
> ...


http://ibnlive.in.com/news/why-rupe...fitskind-ipad-newspaper-failed/308789-11.html


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## elbows (Dec 4, 2012)

editor said:


> That was an exclusive one-off deal with Verizon.


 
I suppose my point was that Murdoch didnt care about the exclusivity, if they had any faith in it by this point rather than killing it, Im sure it would be making its way to other paltforms.

As for the article about it being strangely cut off from the internet, an even bigger problem Murdoch has is along similar limes - what he has done to the relevance of The Times by putting it behind a paywall.


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