When it arrived for iPad, many felt it would change how people would read the news each morning. Now, News Corp’s
The Daily could soon be headed to the history books, according to news first reported by
The New York Observer.
First launched in
February 2011, the iPad daily arrived with great promise. Eighteen months later, however, The Daily is hemorrhaging $30 million per year. Because of this, News Corp. has placed the publication “on watch,” and will reassess its position following this year’s presidential election on November 6.
This news follows reports earlier this month that Rupert Murdoch, New Corp. CEO and chairman, plans on splitting the company in two.
So what went wrong?
Assuming The Daily’s days are numbered, I have some ideas why it failed to attract iPad customers. In fact, the reasons are the same as the ones I suggested last August, when I decided to
no longer subscribe to the publication.
And no, the reason isn’t Murdoch.
The Daily’s weakness has always been the competition, which offers timely news on the iPad for nothing.
These competitors include: the
Zite Personalized Magazine,
Flipboard,
Pulse News, among others.
People also no longer seem to have, or want to spend, the time scanning through boring news articles only to find the one or two they actually find interesting to read. As such, readers today want a publication that is flexible enough to offer only the content from topics they want to see. Finally, these customers want that content to change on a constant basis and not just once per day.
On all these points, The Daily has struck out.
This doesn’t mean that I’ll be happy to see The Daily go.
Rather, the Daily proved the iPad to be a terrific way to
read in-depth news, which caused many of us to finally cancel our paper subscriptions.
Unfortunately, that probably wasn't enough, even at just $0.14 per day.
Why do you feel The Daily is likely to die less than two years after it arrived?
Source:
The New York Observer
