News Corp plans to launch its rumored iPad-only newspaper on January 17 according to recent reports
About a month ago, word leaked that Apple and News Corp head Rupert Murdoch were working to develop a daily iPad-only newspaper called, you guesed it, the Daily. Rumored to cost users $0.99 a week, the Daily will purportedly make use of an app subscription method not currently offered by Apple. And lest you think this is some fly-by-night type of publication, Murdoch reportedly recruited some big guns to work on the endeavor, including New Yorker music critic Sash Frere-Jones who will reportedly take charge of the paper’s arts and culture department.
When word of Apple’s foray into the world of publication first broke, it was reported that Apple would introduce its new initiative by the end of November. This, obviously, never came to pass, and while some might have taken that as an indication that the rumor was off-base, in-the-know Apple blogger John Gruber threw his hat into the ring and wrote that an announcement detailing Apple and News Corp’s latest venture would occur around December 9th. This too never came to pass.
Well, now comes a report from Peter Kafka of All Things D who notes, citing multiple sources, that News Corp plans to launch the new mobile newspaper during the week of January 17th. And not that this should factor into the legitimacy (in either direction) of Kafka’s report, but it’s certainly worth mentioning that News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal, of which All Things D is a subsection.
In any event, Kafka corroborates earlier reports that the Daily is taking staffing at the paper very seriously and adds that “it will use lots of video and it will have cool multimedia bells and whistles, including some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about.”
Also worth mentioning is that the Daily will reportedly make use of a new “push” subscription feature from Apple wherein users can opt to be automatically be billed for either week-long or month-long subscriptions. Once set up, a new edition of the publication will show up on user’s iPads each and every morning.
