Thursday, February 03, 2011

Internet Evolution - Ron Miller - News Corp's The Daily Is Doomed:

What strikes me immediately is that The Daily looks like a conventional news magazine. I don't know what I was expecting -- perhaps something new and more exciting -- but what I got was essentially a multimedia iPad version of Time.

Sure, the multimedia elements are nice, but I can highly recommend The Guardian's Eyewitness or the Life Explorer apps for some really dazzling photo journalism -- both of which are free, by the way. And the fact that The Daily includes video? Well, of course it includes video.

The problem here as I see it is the model. Murdoch apparently thinks that we still want a daily newspaper from a single voice, and that we are willing to pay for it. What he doesn't understand is that today's readers want to read the content they want from a variety of sources. The Flipboard app, for instance, creates a magazine-like experience on the fly from the sources you choose -- and it's free.