News Corp is taking the iPad very seriously as a new way to distribute the news. The media giant is taking it so seriously that it is developing a new publication called the Daily which will only be available on the iPad (no print edition, no Website). News Corp is hiring 100 journalists for this iPad newspaper and is reportedly working with engineers on loan from Apple to make it shine.
The last time a big media company hired so many journalists to launched a splashy new publication was Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine, which was more of a print venture and didn’t survive. I hope the Daily fares better and really takes this opportunity to rethink how news is presented to readers without any of the limitations of print. For one thing, based on who is getting hired for this project, it looks like the Daily will be heavy on video, interactive graphics, and rich photos. Nothing too startling there. Pretty much every newspaper and magazine edition on the iPad is going in that direction. With all the hype that is brewing around the project, hopefully it will push the envelope beyond those obvious iPad features.
But the fact that News Corp. is putting so many resources into this project raises a basic question that has yet to be answered satisfactorily: What should an iPad newspaper look like?
Well, I am not sure it should look like a newspaper at all. The nice thing about starting from scratch is that the Daily won’t have to feel familiar in the same way that an iPad app for the Wall Street Journal or New York Times does. I fear that even the Daily will be too parochial, showing only news and content produced by its staff. But people no longer limit their news consumption to one publication, even within a single reading session.
From a reader’s perspective, the optimal iPad newspaper should be three things:
In other words, it should look a lot more like Flipboard or Pulse, integrating news from people’s Twitter and Facebook feeds. I will be surprised if the Daily follows any of these three tenets. The purpose the iPad-only publication seems to be to isolate readers in the iPad so they have to pay for it. But even if that is the case, it won’t succeed unless it embraces the rest of the Web.
I asked some TechCrunch readers on Twitter what they think an iPAd newspaper should look like. Here are their answers (add yours in comments):
@TechCrunch News on the iPad should not include "paper" in the name. And it should be interactive. Timelines, polls, etc.—
Brennan Stehling (@brennanMKE) November 21, 2010
@TechCrunch I think it should look similar to @flipboard—
Devise Innovations (@deviseinnov8ns) November 21, 2010
@TechCrunch should be interactive, embedded video, audio, and social integration, all touch friendly—
Angelo Italiano (@aitalian) November 21, 2010
@TechCrunch Well, it shouldn't be entirely like a newspaper at all! It's an iPad. Let the content sing through the iPad's rich functionality—
(@greg_taylor) November 21, 2010
@TechCrunch It should look like a touch-optimized website.—
Craig Kroeger (@craigkroeger) November 21, 2010
@TechCrunch just hope they leave out the fake page turning. if i wanted to turn a page, wouldnt be using and ipad. "next page" will due—
Anthony Frasier (@KingFrasier) November 21, 2010
The Apple iPad, formerly referred to as the Apple Tablet, is a touch-pad tablet computer announced in January 2010, and released in April 2010. It has internet capabilities running on either WiFi or 3G, and offers an optional dock with a full size mechanical keyboard. The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. Its size and...
News Corp is the world’s largest media conglomerate company. News Corporation is a diversified global media company with operations in eight industry segments: filmed entertainment; television; cable network programming; direct broadcast satellite television; magazines and inserts; newspapers and information services; book publishing; and other. The activities of News Corporation are conducted principally in the United States, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, Asia and Latin America. Fox Interactive Media (FIM) oversees News Corporation’s Internet business operations. News Corp’s subsidiaries include: MySpace Slingshot Labs WSJ.com
Flipboard is a digital social magazine that aggregates web links from your social circle, i.e. Twitter and Facebook, and displays the content in magazine form on an iPad.
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