From Peter Cohen in New York
Horrid winter weather has blanketed the northeastern United States, but that didn’t stop journalists swarming to the famed Guggenheim Museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for a chance to watch the launch of The Daily, the newest creation of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire.
While tourists and art-gawkers continued to filter in and out of the storied museum, the Guggenheim’s sizable rotunda served as the corral for hacks of all stripes – milling, predictably, around a refreshment table stocked with coffee, tea and water.
At about 10:30am local time, the audience was ushered into the museum’s Peter B Lewis Theater, located below ground level and, much to the alarm of some reporters, out of range of cell networks. Fortunately, News Corp had provided complimentary wifi to ensure online journalists could live-blog the event.
The small theatre’s thick pile carpet, iridescent blue lighting and piped-in down-tempo music gave the affair the sheen of a club happening – or perhaps the boarding lounge for a Virgin Atlantic flight – rather than a press launch. Media were seated according to outlet, with print and broadcast journalists and some high-profile online writers given prime access in front of the stage, while bloggers and radio reporters were cast off to the side.
A phalanx of cameras ringed the outer edge of the seating area. Behind them, out of the spotlight in the front row slightly to the left of the stage, sat Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing and a close ally of absent CEO Steve Jobs.
Shortly after the advertised 11am start, aging but still vibrant tycoon Rupert Murdoch took the stage to polite applause, iPad in hand, with the first public edition of The Daily on the screen. The News Corp CEO, speaking clearly and confidently, opined on the future of the media in the age of the tablet computer as he introduced his new publication. “New times demand new journalism” was the core of his message; the challenge, to address an “educated and sophisticated” readership that eschews both national newspapers and TV news. Yet he promised The Daily would reflect the traditional values of “shoe-leather reporting, good editing and a sceptical eye”.
News Corp’s John Miller, a former head of waning internet giant AOL, led a live demonstration of the product, assisted by editor Jesse Angelo, previously of the New York Post. Though billed top alongside Murdoch on invitations, Apple VP of internet services Eddy Cue was brought on only briefly and belatedly to talk about Apple’s involvement, mentioning – but declining to expand on – the new App Store subscription model that launches with The Daily and will be rolled out “very soon” to other publishers.
While Apple’s presence could definitely be felt, with company executives and PR staff running herd and guiding the proceedings, this was without question a News Corp event: besides a modest Apple logo backing Cue’s stage appearance, no Apple branding appeared anywhere.
Though Murdoch’s ambitions seem broad, The Daily is very much a US paper – a sports section described by Angelo as “the showstopper” featured only American leagues – and is available only to US iTunes accounts, with no UK edition planned. At 14 cents a day or $40 a year (about 8.5 pence or £25) it costs much less than a regular daily newspaper – or indeed the iPad edition of the Times, sold by News Corp’s UK arm for £2 per week.
Opinions vary on how innovative The Daily’s format really is – features such as embedded video, social networking links and a Cover Flow-style “carousel” page view have been seen in other digital magazines – but the quality of its journalism may be the biggest test. On stage, Apple’s Eddy Cue said it was “incredible to believe something of this production value can be done every day”. The editors have a budget of half a million dollars a week to prove it can.
