The Daily - Not Ready for Prime Time

The Daily, a Rupert Murdoch production to create an iPad newspaper, is a first effort in need of a lot of work.  I was a bit surprised that it did not do better on the first iteration. After all Murdoch's empire includes perhaps the best electronic newspaper I know of the WSJ.  This effort is a bit more.


In a story from Reuters, one commenter suggested that the iPad is the most important part of building new subscriptions ("The rapid emergence of tablet devices is a potentially profound development for publishers.")  So getting this right is critical from many points.  The Financial Times publisher claimed that the iPad is driving their new subscription growth.


On the editorial side - I found two of the editorials to be things that were interesting.  But the news stuff - while media rich - seemed a lot like USA Today or what most people call news light.   They did a series of stories on the situation in Egypt, which while glossy were a bit underwhelming.


One thing I liked about the App was the ability to email articles.  Although I could not figure out how copy text, the App seems well designed.


The application is on iTunes and the paper is free for two weeks.  The paper will be about $40 per year for daily delivery.  I hope that it will develop and will follow it during the period.  But from the first look, I am not sure I would subscribe for the Daily at this point.