Amaya Toman Reading newspapers and magazines on the iPad is convenient and environmentally friendly Nowadays, we can already read the electronic version of almost all major publications, which are also published in paper version, on our Pads. In today's article, we will recall the release of the first newspaper, designed exclusively for apple tablets.
First in the world
The world's first newspaper, which could only be read by those lucky enough to own an iPad, saw the light of day on July 31, 2012 and was called The Daily. Even before the Apple tablet was officially announced to the world, Apple CEO Steve Jobs met with executives from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times to discuss a digitized version of the newspaper that could be viewed on a tablet. News Corp, the company behind The Daily, went in a completely different direction: instead of digitizing existing paper newspapers, they decided to create a digital newspaper exclusively for the then brand new iPad.
At first glance, it might seem that this is an absolutely brilliant idea with nothing to spoil. How the mass expansion of the Internet has changed the way people get information and news has partly damaged traditional "paper" journalism. But the arrival of iTunes together with the App Store proved that users were willing to pay extra for high-quality digital content that they could easily and quickly access from their devices anywhere and anytime. Embarking on something like this seemed like a great business plan.
Gallery
There is nothing to spoil
From the reader's point of view, The Daily looked really tempting. The newspaper offered an original combination of the appearance of a traditional printed newspaper and modern interactive elements along with local information such as the weather forecast. The newspaper received a financial injection from Rupert Murdoch in the form of a thirty million dollar investment with a budget of 500 thousand dollars a week. Subscriptions were 99 cents a week, with the proceeds going to News Corp. 70 cents, other income came from advertising. It could be said that The Daily pioneered the system of regular payment per app instead of a one-time payment.
But things were not going as well as they had hoped at News Corp. represented. Despite gaining more than 100 paying subscribers, The Daily lost $30 million in its first year of operation. Adam C. Engs of Tidbits stated in early 2011 that the paper would need to reach about 715 paying subscribers to break even—a goal that The Daily fell far short of.
…Or yes?
The problem wasn't just the price. The Daily lacked focus and didn't really offer readers anything radically different from what they could find anywhere else for free. There were no clicks because the individual messages were only displayed in the application – so users had no way to directly share the messages and thus help the organic growth of impressions. Another stumbling block was the size of the files – they took 1 to 10 minutes for some users to download at sizes up to 15GB.
In the end, The Daily didn't even make it to the end of 2012. On December 3, News Corp announced that the world's first iPad-exclusive newspaper was shutting down due to a reorganization of the company's assets. According to Murdoch, the digital newspaper The Daily has failed to "find a large enough audience to create a long-term sustainable business model".
