December 4, 2012
We come to bury The Daily, not to praise it
The corpse of The Daily — Rupert Murdoch’s attempt at creating a daily newspaper for the iPad — is barely cold to the touch, but already there is no shortage of post mortems.
We can learn a lot by picking through bones of the dearly departed, so I’ve rounded up a few articles worth reading:
Hamish McKenzie at PandoDaily: Get ready for the age of premium microblogging — How could the The Daily survive in an age where anyone can create a magazine?
Marco Arment at marco.org: The Daily shutting down — He is the creator of the apparently profitable The Magazine. His advice is to start small and work your way up.
Mathew Ingram at GigaOm: Why Rupert Murdoch’s bold bet on The Daily was doomed from the start — Ingram’s smug attitude is irritating but he still makes some good points.
Matt Buchanan at BuzzFeed: Tech, Too, Killed “The Daily” — A look at the technological issues that plagued the publication.
Jeff Sonderman at Poynter: 2 major lessons from the demise of The Daily — Thoughts on platform and audience.
Jack Shafer at Reuters: The Daily didn’t fail — Rupert gave up — Argues that losses at The Daily were chump change for Murdoch. Plus gives a round up of even more articles about the end of The Daily.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball: Why ‘The Daily’ Failed — Not surprisingly, rushes to the defence of the iPad.
Finally, I asked tech writer Andy Ihnatko to elaborate on a tweet where he called The Daily “old timey.” He was kind enough to answer:
<a href="https://twitter.com/newsonaut">newsonaut</a> A pay-for-play product whose feature is "the news," produced in daily units. An iPad news product needs to be inventive.</p>— Andy Ihnatko (Ihnatko) December 4, 2012
He’s right. A publication in the age of the Internet that publishes in a once-a-day cycle is indeed “old timey.”