"The Daily", News Corp's Exclusively Digital News Publication is Out

News Corp's "The Daily", the digitally exclusive publication for the iPad is out. Murdoch hopes this launch puts him front and center in the digital news world. "New times demand new journalism,"he quoted at a press event in New York City.

The Daily is an iPad only digital publication that subscribers pay either 99 cents (approx Rs. 45) for a week or $40 (approx Rs. 1,825) for a year. The application will update itself every morning. The style of journalism in The Daily is public interest, it contains a mix of news, magazine and newscast writing, and aims to utilize all the advantages the digital medium serves, by integrating pictures, videos and interactive features to cover stories more holistically. 

The number of iPads that have been sold (15 million) isn't enough for News Corp to get the kind of returns they'd want to recoup their initial investment. Murdoch says the cost of producing The Daily is about $500,000 (approx Rs. 22,816,000) a week, which is relatively low because none of the machinery to produce and distribute a traditional newspaper is required. Subscriptions will make up the primary part of the revenue and after that, advertising.

This is a step forward for journalism, no doubt, but how quickly will The Daily have someone following on its footsteps? Now that the iPad is out in India, we will have to wait a little while for an adequate number of iPad sales before anyone launches a digital publication.