Marco.org

Kat Stoeffel for the New York Observer, regarding the turmoil at News Corp.:

In addition, there are internal rumors that The Daily has been put “on watch.” According to a source the status of the groundbreaking iPad tabloid—which loses $30 million a year—will be reassessed after the November 6 election.

(Via AppAdvice, ᔥ↬☃ Matt Langer.)

First of all, I’m amused that the election results may decide this. Watch for the November 7 headline, “Thousands of Casual iPad Owners Revolt As Obama Re-Election Shuts Down The Daily”.

But if The Daily is having trouble, I’m not surprised. Shortly after its launch, I wrote about my fundamental concern:

It’s weird to me, as a long-time internet-only news reader, to pay money for a bunch of content I don’t care about. More than half of each issue is sports news, entertainment gossip, ads, and little newspaper games (crosswords, Sudoku, horoscopes), and I need to buy all of that to get the news, editorials, and app reviews that I care about.

Bundling a bunch of stuff I don’t care about with the few pieces I want to read is the old-world model, when custom-targeted or on-demand news for each reader was infeasible. But in this century, I can go to a handful of websites whenever I want news, view the handful of stories that interest me, then move on. Flipping through a bunch of uninteresting-to-us content and ads was an annoyance of the old world, like blow-ins, that we tolerated because we had to — but now, we don’t.

I think that still stands. And while The Daily has clearly found an audience, I question its ability to grow meaningfully.