Scott Wingo Business: The Daily going dark: News Corp stopping the digital presses on December 15

The Daily going dark: News Corp stopping the digital presses on December 15

The Daily, the flagship magazine launched at a special event on February 2, 2011, is closing down on December 15, 2012, just shy of its second birthday. A bold attempt at embracing tablet-centric publishing with the support of Rupert Murdoch and Apple, News Corps announced the shut down as part of a large overall restructuring that will involve their news division keeping the name News Corps, their entertainment division splitting off under the name Fox Group, and Jesse Angelo, who was editor-in-chief of the Daily, will become published of the New York post. Here's what Murdoch had to say in the News Corps press release:

As part of a digital restructuring initiative, the company will cease standalone publication of The Daily iPad app on December 15, 2012, though the brand will live on in other channels. Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post.

“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. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily.”

News Corps also says some technology, staff, and other assets will get folded into the New York Post.

The Daily has been an interesting ride. Traditional publishers have been reticent to do digital-first publications in the past, and it was great to see News Corps try to blaze a trail into that new frontier. However, they did it in a very traditional way, and their analog strategies and business models never seemed to mesh with the realities of digital content gathering and distribution.

It doesn't feel like a great news magazine can't be made exclusively for tablets, it feels like News Corps realized their weren't making the right one, the right way.

Marco Arment's The Magazine does a great job re-inventing short-form articles for mobile in general, and Newsstand in specific. Perhaps it will likewise take a new person or organization to figure out news-gathering and reporting.

Source: News Corps