Murdoch’s The Daily hits iPads today
The aging press baron makes one last bid to capture the eyeballs of the Internet generation
[UPDATE: The free (for two weeks) app is available here. There’s a video tour here. Click here for our live coverage of the event and first impressions of the product.]
At 11 a.m. EST, a museum-full of reporters and analysts will gather amid the Post-Impressionists at the Guggenheim to watch News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch and Apple’s Eddie Cue (a stand in for the ailing Steve Jobs) unveil The Daily — the world’s first iPad-only daily “newspaper.”
For Murdoch, the 79-year-old Australian-born press baron with properties that range from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to News of the World and MySpace, The Daily is likely to be his last chance to create a news product for the Internet generation.
For Apple (AAPL), The Daily may be the company’s last chance to fix a broken subscription model (see, for example, here) and prove that its tablet computer can be what Jobs told newspaper and magazine publishers it would be: A vehicle with which to halt the industry’s downward spiral.
More ink — and bits — have been spilled leading up to today’s launch than any new publication in recent memory. We’ve read most of it so that you don’t have to.
Below the fold: Links to a few of the choicest bits.
- Wordyard’s Scott Rosenberg: Why the Daily, Murdoch’s “tablet newspaper,” will be DOA
- The New York Times‘ David Carr: A News Corp. Newspaper, but Not in Print
- New York Magazine‘s Gabriel Sherman: Reading ‘The Daily’
- Newsonomics’ Ken Doctor: Nine Questions on Murdoch’s Doubly Cool Daily
We’ll be bringing our iPad to the Guggenheim Wednesday morning and — the gods of Wi-Fi willing — hope to file live reports from the event.
See also:
- Who’s who on The (iPad) Daily
- The Kindle kerfuffle
- Why digital newsstands stink
- Rupert Murdoch’s The (iPad) Daily gets a launch date – sort of
- Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch, BFF?
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]