New Delhi: At a time when the US newspaper industry is struggling with dipping circulation and ad revenues, News Corp. has ventured into the emerging world of tablets with a daily 'newspaper' for the Apple iPad in a bid to revive fortunes.
The Daily isn't the newspaper I was expecting, rather it looks, reads and feels like a news magazine that is published every day. It is not for the quick read that we are accustomed to every morning with a cup of steaming tea alongside. The Daily is a leisure read, something most of us don't have the luxury for every day of the week.
The layout isn't like a newspaper, nor is much of the content. It's more analytical and feature-like. There's little reportage, a quality that defines newspapers. As an Indian and a Bollywood addict I was pleased to find an article on how the soft power of Bollywood is taking a hard-line against extremism.
Putting together a daily news publication with the kind of rich content and design requires a lot of effort and Rupert Murdoch has invested in the manpower to bring out a fresh edition every day of the year. The results impress.
Whichever way you hold your iPad, landscape or portrait, the layout reassembles itself to near-perfection. There are some types of content, with specific stories, that can be viewed only if you turn your tablet to portrait to landscape or vice versa.
While presentation is good for the first impression, in the long run it is the content that counts. I felt that The Daily lags a bit on that count. This could also be because it isn't targeted towards me - an average Indian consumer. But The Daily misses the daily feel. I can swipe through an older edition and chances are that it will not strike me that the content is supposed to be old. The immediacy, is absent.
Magazines for tablets are a great medium for advertisers, an The Daily is no exception. Brands can spend on multimedia and interactive advertising that will get them more attraction than on conventional websites. There are also online shopping links for showcased accessories.
The app is prone to inexpressibly close down. This could be a bug that they need to fix. Also I would like to zoom in to photos, particularly in the photo galleries, but that's not happening. The Daily does have the feature, but only in some select stories, not the galleries. On a touch screen device, we all are prone to accidentally touch places where we don't intend to and land up elsewhere. Then coming back is a problem. I had to take the long route back. It would've been great if there was something like the back button that we have on the Web browsers.
Otherwise it is fairly easy to browse through the section with the omnipresent navigation bar and also through a carousel. The stories also pull in contextual content in the form of Twitter feeds. Users can also audio comment but video comments aren't possible because the current iPads don't have a camera. Also there is the usual leisure stuff - crosswords, Sudoku and games.
The first two weeks are free and it'll subsequently cost about a dollar a week and $40 a year. That's not much, even by Indian standards. The 100-page daily focuses on news, sports, gossip and celebrity, opinion, arts and life, and apps and games. Also users can get localised weather reports and a customisable sports package.
In this age of always connected portable devices, The Daily isn't exactly a newspaper or a news website replacement. It is, for now, supplementary.
Comments
0 comment