The Daily gets junked amid News Corp business split

The Daily tech and staff will be folded into The Post

More than a year and a half after launch, News Corp is officially shuttering its iPad-only newspaper The Daily.

News Corp announced Monday that it will no longer produce the stand-alone version of the iPad app, The Daily, but said that it will continue to “live on in other channels.”  Like…in our hearts?  No, actually—“Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post.”  Oh, okay.

The Daily was plagued by problems from the beginning.   We all wanted to love it, but as MarketWatch founder and recently named USA Today publisher Larry Kramer lamented, “It wasn’t just that it really didn’t work.  It was light years worse than apps created by existing newspapers or news sources…some from the very same company.” 

It wasn’t just buggy—very buggy—but didn’t utilize the unique advantages of publishing in a digital format.  There was little video and interactive content, despite high quality journalism and writing.  It also saw relatively infrequent news reporting for being a digital publication.  The app is refreshed once or twice a day, but doesn’t sport the fluid, ongoing reporting that Web-based blogs provide.  To make matters worse, there’s no stand-alone site, so it’s not like Web users can read the news from their laptop or desktop computer, or pull it up on their mobile browser.   In short, it was trying to publish a traditional magazine in a digital format, rather than creating a digital magazine.

There were other problems as well.  The Daily simply couldn’t cultivate much of a following, and over the summer, it announced it would be laying off nearly one-third of its staff.  At the time, rumors were already bubbling about a possible shut-down of The Daily.

The Daily will see its demise on December 15, at which point Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo will become the new publisher of The New York Post, where he has been Executive Editor.

“From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. 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,” said News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, in a statement.

The news comes as part of a larger announcement detailing the split of News Corp’s publishing and media businesses into two separate, public companies.  Dow Jones Editor-in-Chief Robert Thompson, who is also Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, will become CEO of the new publishing entity, while Rupert Murdoch will remain CEO of the media business, now called Fox Group (News Corp bought Fox Network 25 years ago).

News Corp closed trading on Monday at $24.53, down 0.45% from Friday’s close. 

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