The Daily Wait

John Gruber says Murdoch’s The Daily is dead because it is way too slow:

I’ve been reading The Daily each day since its debut Wednesday. Three days, three issues. My opinion of it has declined each day. Until I see an updated version of the app, I’m done with it. I noticed yesterday that it took way too long to load the day’s new issue. Today, I timed it. From the time I tapped the icon on my home screen until I could read a single page, today’s issue took one minute and twenty seconds. And to be clear, that was over a reasonably fast Wi-Fi connection.

One minute, twenty seconds. For over a minute of that time, this is all that I saw. At that point, it’s already a lost cause. There’s nothing the actual content or interface of the app can do to make up for the fact that it takes way too long to see anything at all. Imagine a paper newspaper that was wrapped in an envelope, and the envelope was so difficult to open that it took over a minute before you could see the front page of the issue. Who would buy that newspaper? No one, that’s who. And I suspect that’s who’s going to read The Daily, unless they fix this, and soon.

This week’s launch of Rupert Murdoch’s iPad “newspaper,” the Daily, is a milestone: It’s the first significant attempt, since the Web conquered the digital world in 1995, to create a major new media product that embraces technology yet spurns the Web — and the public Internet, too. Chris Anderson’s Wired “Web is Dead” package was the warning shot for this phenomenon, but the Daily’s introduction puts it in front of us in palpable touch-screen form. It boldly declares: We’re digital people but we’re not Web people. … Why do I say that the Daily spurns the Web and the Net? I mean, beyond the obvious reason that there is no Web site that offers its contents in a convenient form each day. It’s not just that. The Daily also contains no links. (Some today see this as a plus; I do not.) There are no RSS feeds. No email addresses to contact the writers and editors. No email alerts or mailing list. Comments on the articles, yes, but not reachable through the Web. No, archives, back issue index, or search! (They’re on Twitter, however. They have a blog, too, and it’s not bad.) … In other words, most of the apparatus of two-way communication that every serious digital publishing venture of the past 15 years has taken as a given is missing from the Daily. They’re serious about this iPad-only thing! But they don’t seem to realize that they’re repeating the mistakes of the very recent past. … My prediction: If they’re pragmatists about the Web, they’ve got a chance — they can adapt and evolve their product so it’s a little more up to date, less hermetic and more inclusive of the public that lives online today. But if they’re ideologues — if they really believe that what is essentially a magazine “pasted on a screen” is the future of journalism — then they’re in deep trouble, and the Daily will only be Murdoch’s latest and most spectacular digital money-sink.

- Scott Rosenberg, Murdoch’s Daily: post-Web innovation or CD-ROM flashback?

The Daily is the new CD-ROM.

(ht @jayrosen_nyu)

The Daily: What we know so far - Hayley Tsukayama

After a slight delay, Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper of the future is set todebut Wednesday in New York City. Apple Vice President of Internet Services Eddy Cue will take co-founder Steve Jobs’ place by Murdoch’s side to debut the tablet newspaper, which is made specifically and exclusively for tablets. It will have no Web presence, save advertising, and will not update as quickly as a traditional news Web site.

The publication will publish nightly like an old-fashioned newspaper, so that readers will have it to peruse with their morning coffee.

Subscriptions will cost 99 cents per week, and the publication will feature a staff of about 100 reporters led by Jesse Angelo, the former managing editor of the News Corp.-owned New York Post.

The paper will aim to have a “centrist and pragmatic” take on the news, according to an article from New York Magazine, and its tone will be aimed at capturing “young, tech-savvy readers.”

That’s what we know so far. What people are speculating is something different altogether.

Some are already expecting The Daily to flop spectacularly. Citing everything from an target market that’s admittedly limited by gadget ownership to a slower, longer news cycle, critics say The Daily is just a pie-in-the-sky idea that will go nowhere.

Salon co-founder Scott Rosenberg wrote in November that the venture is “dead on arrival,” because without a Web presence, readers won’t have the same ability to link and build a news community that they do with other news sites — or at least won’t be able to do it with the same ease.

I think this is a dumb, dumb model, just like Rosenberg.