Pub Talk
By Jim Sturdivant
About Jim
Jim Sturdivant is senior editor of Publishing Executive magazine and a contributing editor at Book Business magazine. A former community newspaper editor in Philadelphia and Northern New Jersey, he has been covering the publishing industry for NAPCO since 2007. He writes about technology, market trends and revenue opportunities in magazine and book publishing. E-mail him at jsturdivant@napco.com or call 215-238-5224.
Profit from Publishing!
How will media convergence affect the production and distribution of news?
May 22, 2013I thought you all might be interested in this brief interview, conducted online by Jenna Batchelor, a student at Nottingham...
Publishers' Dojo
Like practically everything else in publishing, licensing content is changing
May 20, 2013I'm blogging from the Worldwide Media Marketplace (WMM), an annual event hosted by the FIPP, the worldwide magazine media association....
B2B Beat
ABM Annual Conference Greatest Hits
May 17, 2013Much has been written about ABM merging under the umbrella of SIIA. But much more was going on during the...
Media Vent
On Meredith Corp. Buying, Closing Parenting and Babytalk
May 17, 2013A wise friend in the know suggested to me that the new acquisition by Meredith of the Bonnier titles should...
The Digital Domain
To Pay or Not to Pay ... That is the Changing Question
Apr 30, 2013In an era, where citizen "journalists," aggregators and content farms threaten to turn the information media companies produce into a...
The Digital Market
What do you think of the new mobile Google Play?
Apr 18, 2013A blog came out recently on the redesigned Google Play for mobile. It appears Michael Siliski, group product manager for...
The Postal Pundit
Climbing Out Of The Rubble Of Sandy
Dec 11, 2012The entire Eastern seaboard, but now mostly New York and New Jersey, has been struggling through the aftermath of Sandy,...
Everything Publishing
A New Way To Be a Player
Sep 19, 2011If you want to increase affinity with your brand, grow traffic (up to 20x for some sites) and retention, create...
Byte Back
What Is “Interactive” Anyway? (Part 2)
Feb 28, 2011The real question, it turns out, is less about embedded multimedia than it is about personalization, relevance and immediacy of...
Will The Daily's Demise Chill Publishers' Mobile Innovation? No Way!
|
Jason Hirshhorn, CEO of the ReDEF Group and former MySpace co-president, offered an insider's view of the original motivation for The Daily within News Corp and what its closing means for the company. He believes The Daily (and MySpace) were worthwhile endeavors for the media giant, regardless of perceptions.
"You can look at MySpace and The Daily as failures by News Corp, but you could also see them as impetuses for how they modernize their company," he said, pointing out News Corp's many successes in digital distribution including the Wall Street Journal app. "They are very modern when it comes to media distribution … this came out of having the expertise of MySpace and The Daily and other businesses to educate and partner with the rest of the company."
Hirshhorn said Rupert Murdoch, whom he describes as "the most curious guy in the world," wanted to demonstrate what a tablet-based publication could look like, which is why he partnered with Apple early on to bring the The Daily to the iPad. He chalked up its failure to catch on in high numbers to its platform exclusivity. "You can't really have a huge business based off of one tablet in a nascent space," he said.
This is why News Corp's experience with The Daily should not put any publisher off the idea of pushing products to mobile. Most in the industry recognize the value of extending trusted brands across many platforms; News Corp's mistake was creating a brand exclusively for one device, then expecting people to pay for it when similar products could be accessed for free elsewhere.
The reasoning was that the company could create a digital global brand, sort of a USA Today for the planet; the reality is that the quality news and graphics to be found in The Daily were not enough to draw users and advertisers when there are so many good cross-media experiences to be had. The future of digital media is in brand extensions and HTML5-based products that flow seamlessly from Web to mobile, enabling rich media experiences without long downloads—none of which was possible for The Daily.
News Corp can afford to take big risks and eat losses. The rest of us can learn from them, and observe what The Daily's publisher, Greg Clayman, does as he takes this experience to his new job overseeing News Corp's global digital strategy.
Companies Mentioned:
 |
|
Sections:
|
|
|
COMMENTS
Click here to leave a comment...
