The big news experiment is over. On Monday, News Corp. announced that its groundbreaking iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, would halt publication on Dec. 15. The news app, which was heralded in some circles as the future of publishing when its made its splashy debut in February 2011, failed to amass a large enough readership to justify its existence. At one point, some analysts estimated The Daily to be losing News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch $30 million a year.
"From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation," Murdoch said in a statement:
Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties.
The shakeup will move The Daily's technology and some of its staff to Murdoch's New York Post. Founding editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo will become The Post's publisher.
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Chatter surrounding the tablet app's glitzy launch nearly two years ago quickly turned dour with rumors of layoffs cropping up just a few months later. Some have pointed out that The Daily's target market — relatively few Americans own iPads, and not all of them want to pay for an iPad-only newspaper — spelled The Daily's doom from the very beginning. Others have suggested that reading on a tablet just isn't a very popular activity.
Here, a few Twitter reactions to news of the The Daily's demise:
Mathew Ingram at GigaOm:
Howard Kurtz at Newsweek/The Daily Beast:
BuzzMachine blogger and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis:
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen:
Nilay Patel at The Verge:
Joe Brown at Gizmodo:
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