A very News Corp Daily
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Rupert Murdoch released The Daily - a new, iPad only newspaper. I watched
the press conference and downloaded it. Let me answer some
questions.
Is it revolutionary? Well, not quite. It is exactly what you
would expect a daily newspaper on the iPad to look like that is modelled on
newspapers of old. It is just upgraded with nice colour photos, embedded video,
a way to comment and post to Twitter and Facebook and ads which sometimes do
things other than just stare at you hoping for attention. So not revolutionary
and the idea is you read it pretty much from cover to cover. That said, want to
send a letter to the advice columnist and it is one click away. So it is
digitally integrated. The weather also gets updated.
How is the
content? Very News Corp.
A couple of main stories up front, followed by a Gossip Section, opinion
(quoting Tyler Cowen's book), arts & life, apps & games (including a
crossword and Sudoku) and the sports at the back - you know, just like a
newspaper. Sadly, no comics. It looks like a newspaper but it doesn't look like
one that is of niche appeal. This is desired to hit the average iPad
user.
Who is going to pay $1 per week for it? Well, it isn't too expensive, I’ll give
it that. If you want to read a newspaper cover to cover every day and don't want
it too heavy on content then this fits the bill. It is a commuter or breakfast
newspaper. It is then worth the cost. I personally don't read that stuff on my
commute - I’m into reading the feeds and seeing what is up on the NYT, CNN and
ABC Australian news sites. My days of newspaper reading passed years ago so
don't look at me. The question is whether there are still newspaper as opposed
to news readers out there.
What about advertisers, will they fork
out for it? My guess is
that it will be useful for them given that this application will appeal to
cover-to-cover readers. That is a chunk of attention they will pay to access.
That said, it is no broadsheet. The ads pop up on pages as you flick through and
I'm not sure that has the same display effect.
Will it
last? So this is a
strategy straight out the recent management literature. If your traditional
business faces disruption, create a separate unit and compete in the new path.
The problem is that there is only so big a market and there is little that The
Daily is doing here that can't be replicated by others. If it is successful, the
NYT will work out how to provide something essentially similar. If it is not, it
is not. So News Corp are paying the costs of being first without necessarily
much upside.
To survive The Daily needs 500,000 readers to cover the
$500,000 weekly operating costs plus taxes plus return on investment plus
cannabilisation of something or rather. That is a lot of readers and about 5 per
cent of the iPad market as it will likely be around mid-year. If I had to guess
then I would conclude that this is the past of newspapers rather than the future
of the news.
Joshua Gans is a professor of economics at Melbourne Business School and a visiting scholar at Harvard University.