iPad newspaper 'The Daily' axes a third of its staff
It was announced on Tuesday that "The Daily," media giant News Corp.'s foray into digital newspapers, will lay off 50 of its 170 employees as the embattled subscription-based publication fights to stay alive.
Citing people familiar with The Daily's plans, All Things D reports the expected job cuts come 18 months after the iPad newspaper's launch and will affect the digital publication's editorial and sports pages as well as other essential departments.
While the editorial section will be shut down completely, the sports section is seen as continuing albeit with minimal staff. According to a press release, The Daily will continue to run editorials and opinion pieces in the news section "from time to time as appropriate" while sports will be covered by content partners like Fox Sports. The paper's design and production departments will also suffer from the cuts.
The digital newspaper will shift its focus to "original reporting, strong visual elements, great photography and video, award-winning design, infographics, and interactivity," which reportedly bring the most traffic.
?These are important changes that will allow The Daily to be more nimble editorially and to focus on the elements that our readers have told us through their consumption that they like and want,? said The Daily's Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo. ?Unfortunately, these changes have forced us to make difficult decisions and to say goodbye to some colleagues who have worked hard to make The Daily successful. These moves were driven by the needs of the business.?
Some design changes were also announced alongside the job cuts, including a switch to a portrait-only articles which the publication claims is the most popular orientation for reading. Video will still be viewable in landscape mode and special projects like "WKND" are expected to move continue.
The Daily was created to help newspapers transition into the digital era dominated by tablet devices like Apple's iPad. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's team reportedly worked with Apple and its late CEO Steve Jobs to create an iPad-centric publication which would later be ported to Google's Android operating system.
The move to cut nearly one third of The Daily's workforce may be a result of News Corp.'s upcoming corporate split that will divide the company's news and entertainment entities into two separate companies.
Despite having over 100,000 paid iOS and Android subscribers, The Daily continues to hemorrhage cash and was reportedly put "on watch" earlier this month.
Citing people familiar with The Daily's plans, All Things D reports the expected job cuts come 18 months after the iPad newspaper's launch and will affect the digital publication's editorial and sports pages as well as other essential departments.
While the editorial section will be shut down completely, the sports section is seen as continuing albeit with minimal staff. According to a press release, The Daily will continue to run editorials and opinion pieces in the news section "from time to time as appropriate" while sports will be covered by content partners like Fox Sports. The paper's design and production departments will also suffer from the cuts.
The digital newspaper will shift its focus to "original reporting, strong visual elements, great photography and video, award-winning design, infographics, and interactivity," which reportedly bring the most traffic.
?These are important changes that will allow The Daily to be more nimble editorially and to focus on the elements that our readers have told us through their consumption that they like and want,? said The Daily's Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo. ?Unfortunately, these changes have forced us to make difficult decisions and to say goodbye to some colleagues who have worked hard to make The Daily successful. These moves were driven by the needs of the business.?
Some design changes were also announced alongside the job cuts, including a switch to a portrait-only articles which the publication claims is the most popular orientation for reading. Video will still be viewable in landscape mode and special projects like "WKND" are expected to move continue.
The Daily was created to help newspapers transition into the digital era dominated by tablet devices like Apple's iPad. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's team reportedly worked with Apple and its late CEO Steve Jobs to create an iPad-centric publication which would later be ported to Google's Android operating system.
The move to cut nearly one third of The Daily's workforce may be a result of News Corp.'s upcoming corporate split that will divide the company's news and entertainment entities into two separate companies.
Despite having over 100,000 paid iOS and Android subscribers, The Daily continues to hemorrhage cash and was reportedly put "on watch" earlier this month.
Comments
Interesting, because the Post-PC era is squarely upon us.
Last quarter alone Apple sold 17 million iPads.
Speaking for myself, I prefer an RSS app to one dedicated to a paper. That *might* be what's going on in the market as well.
To me the real issue with the Daily was too much recycled material, not the format. Hell I think they could license the formatting to other publications that want to go digital and make way more than the actual paper does.
Flipboard etc are very popular. In fact it's how I read a lot of my magazine based twitters and rss feeds.
I was on the digital newspaper/magazine bandwagon when the iPad launched - all of my magazines in one place. I had a dozen subscriptions and guess what? I haven't read any of them in about a year because of this convoluted mess. All I want to do is read. Now I've got pages and videos jumping out at me, frustrating article layouts and other media interaction. Just leave me alone and let me read.
1. Excellent remark.
2. Which RSS reader do you use? After upgrading my MacMini to 10.8 I will need to choose one for my Mac that syncs with my iPhone and iPad. Could of course check the AppStore, but to wade through all those Zombie apps, I think an answer from you would benefit me so much more. TIA
Not one to defend the iPad in general - but this failure should not fall on the iPad/Tablets door, this is a News Corp problem.
To many times did I think the Daily editorials looked briliant (the underwater NASA test chamber was great) but the writing was just awful or simply one sided.
To bad, it did look pretty - should just give the tech to a better news company.
Not a fan of Murdoch and his papers so I wouldn't buy it regardless of the content.
Quote:
Originally Posted by agramonte
this is a News Corp problem.
I'm not sure why, but I get the impression that the typical Fox/Murdock news followers are not all that big on reading. Perhaps that is the problem.
Just like everything else they do that involves an internet connection, they're just doing it wrong.
Do you have to be a follower of that Mexican billionaire slob that owns the NY Times to read it? This has nothing to do with Murdoch, it's people that are finding other ways to read without paying for the content.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bdkennedy
I was on the digital newspaper/magazine bandwagon when the iPad launched - all of my magazines in one place. I had a dozen subscriptions and guess what? I haven't read any of them in about a year because of this convoluted mess. All I want to do is read. Now I've got pages and videos jumping out at me, frustrating article layouts and other media interaction. Just leave me alone and let me read.
Amen
I think the problem is you don't simply put magazine/newspaper content into an app, throw in some interactive ads and call it a day. There is so much more that can be done in this space, turning a passive newspaper into a social, interactive and democratic source of content. These geriatric companies need some new forward thinking blood to embrace the post-pc / internet / cloud / social era.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
1. Excellent remark.
2. Which RSS reader do you use? After upgrading my MacMini to 10.8 I will need to choose one for my Mac that syncs with my iPhone and iPad. Could of course check the AppStore, but to wade through all those Zombie apps, I think an answer from you would benefit me so much more. TIA
Reeder.
Whenever you're looking for the best apps that you'd probably like, in this case choose Categories, then filter by Top Paid, and then scroll down while keeping an eye on the Ratings.
You'll only see the best. Reeder is the first RSS app, third one down. Can't go wrong. I always filter by What's Hot, Top 25, and Top Paid/Free in each category. So I'll only be exposed to all the best stuff, which is all i care about. I sometimes look through New as well.
Happy If I helped.
I would have subscribed, I just felt dirty paying for a subscription to Rupert Murdoch for a news product.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bdkennedy
I was on the digital newspaper/magazine bandwagon when the iPad launched - all of my magazines in one place. I had a dozen subscriptions and guess what? I haven't read any of them in about a year because of this convoluted mess. All I want to do is read. Now I've got pages and videos jumping out at me, frustrating article layouts and other media interaction. Just leave me alone and let me read.
That was my problem with Popular Science... never knew how the text went, or what to touch. I like NewsWeek magazine App.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
1. Excellent remark.
2. Which RSS reader do you use? After upgrading my MacMini to 10.8 I will need to choose one for my Mac that syncs with my iPhone and iPad. Could of course check the AppStore, but to wade through all those Zombie apps, I think an answer from you would benefit me so much more. TIA
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+1 for Reeder. I used to use NetNewsWire and while I initially liked it, eventually I grew annoyed with it, although now I can't remember why. Reeder is amazing though. It is a joy to use. Especially in conjunction with Readability. They work really well together.
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The newspapers thought tablets might save them and this company jumped on board. But if they were wrong, it's kind of bad for the iPad (one less use) and newspapers (go out of business finally?).
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I'm not sure why, but I get the impression that the typical Fox/Murdock news followers are not all that big on reading. Perhaps that is the problem.
Well, that didn't take long. Enjoy the NY Times and MSNBC.
That said, I hope The Daily and similar ventures can make this biz model work...not sure what the answer is though (having decided not to subscribe myself).