The Daily, The News Corp App, Is Closing; I Said It Would Not Work

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All Things D is reporting that The Daily , the iPad news app company that was started as an effort between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Apple Computer under Steve Jobs, will be closed. The 120 employee, New York-based effort will be folded into the current New York Post , but it’s not clear how many of the workers will be retained.

On February 3, 2011, this blogger gave this vlog evaluation of The Daily app which also appeared at SFGate.com , the website of The San Francisco Chronicle and Zennie62.com:

In a word, you can’t silo media and expect to be successful at it. It has to be an open loop, and not a closed on. And simply because all it takes is one agent in the closed loop to make its contents available in the open on, and eventually, your exclusivity ends – if it was ever achieved to start with.

This is what Mr. Murdoch issued via press release:

“From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily.”

I can’t say The Daily was bold; I thought it was arrogant. It was a reflection of all that’s wrong with media, and why traditional journalists continue to be befuddled by The Internet and with respect to mobile, Digital Media. That’s for a longer post, but here’s a hint: mobile should never equal closed loop.

Got that?

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