LOS ANGELES – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has launched the first iPad-only newspaper called ‘The Daily’. The publisher is hoping the right combination of traditional reporting and technological wizardry will lure enough subscribers and advertisers to pay for a new way of delivering journalism.
News Corp plans to charge 99 cents per week or 40 dollars per year for the newspaper. The digital newspaper is produced by reporters in New York and Los Angeles and a network of freelancers. It will be broken out into sections including news, gossip and opinion and delivered to subscribers on their iPads each morning, with each edition having as many as 100 pages the size of an iPad. Content will be updated, though not as often as a website.
“There’s a growing segment of the population here and around the world that is educated and sophisticated, and they’re not reading national newspapers or watching much television news,” Mr Murdoch said during a launch event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “But they do consume media. And they expect content tethered to their specific interests delivered anytime, anywhere.”
‘The Daily’ is the latest example of how media companies are trying to mine the iPad’s popularity for new sources of revenue. Many publishers already have free or paid apps as an add-on to their print editions.
