The failure of Rupert Murdoch's pioneering iPad newspaper The Daily underscores the problems of the news industry as it seeks a paid model for the digital age, analysts said. Murdoch announced on December 3 that The Daily, launched as a paid subscription for the Apple tablet, would be shuttered December 15 due to a lack of readers.
The News Corp chief called The Daily - exclusively designed for touchscreen tablets - "a bold experiment," but acknowledged that it was unable to find enough paying readers to sustain it.
Some staff from the virtual newspaper will shift to the another News Corp property, New York Post. Murdoch launched The Daily with much fanfare in February 2011, describing it as a model for the news industry in the face of declining readership and a shift to online news.
The Daily was sold through Apple's App Store and iTunes and cost 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year.
Rebecca Lieb, analyst with the Altimeter Group, said the shutdown was not surprising. "While it was highly customised for the platform The Daily was a commodity news product," Lieb said. "It didn't offer anything that readers could not get from any other newspaper, and it lacked a brand.
"Had I been Murdoch I would have launched a version of something that was already branded" such as The Wall Street Journal.
The Daily was believed to have around 100,000 paying subscribers, although precise figures were not disclosed. Launching the paper, Murdoch said it would need to recruit around 500,000 readers a week to break even.
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