Edward Helmore in New York guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 November 2010
Rupert Murdoch, head of the media giant News Corp, and Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, are preparing to unveil a new digital "newspaper" called the Daily at the end of this month, according to reports in the US media.
The collaboration, which has been secretly under development in New York for several months, promises to be the world's first "newspaper" designed exclusively for new tablet-style computers such as Apple's iPad, with a launch planned for early next year.
Intended to combine "a tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence", the publication represents Murdoch's determination to push the newspaper business beyond the realm of print.
According to reports, there will be no "print edition" or "web edition"; the central innovation, developed with assistance from Apple engineers, will be to dispatch the publication automatically to an iPad or any of the growing number of similar devices.
With no printing or distribution costs, the US-focused Daily will cost 99 cents (62p) a week.
According to the US elite fashion industry journal Women's Wear Daily, the Murdoch-Jobs "newspaper" will be run from the 26th floor of the News Corp offices in New York, where 100 journalist have been hired, including Pete Picton, an online editor from the Sun, as one of three managing editors. The editor of the Daily has not been announced, but observers are assuming it will be Jesse Angelo, the managing editor of the New York Post and rising star in the News Corp firmament.
Angelo, who was at school with Murdoch's son Lachlan, was formerly editor of the Post's business section and has recruited the tabloid's gossip columnist Richard Johnson to run the Daily's Los Angeles bureau. Other staff include Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at the New Yorker, who will oversee arts and culture. News Corp's pattern of hiring for the project suggests that video will be a major component of the new publication.
The 79-year-old Murdoch is said to have had the idea for the project after studying a survey that suggested readers spent more time immersed in their iPads than they did – comparatively speaking — on the internet, where unfocused surfing is typical.
Sources say Murdoch is committed to the project in part because he believes that the Daily, properly executed, will demonstrate that consumers are willing to pay for high- quality, original content online.
Full story at The Guardian.
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