Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch will appear on stage together in San Francisco on January 19 to launch The Daily, News Corp.'s iPad-only publication, according to Forbes.
Forbes said 100 staffers are already on-hand at The Daily, churning out dummy issues to an exclusive audience of 1,000. It's a different approach for Murdoch's News Corp., which usually comes into existing publications and restructures, as it did with The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. With The Daily, Murdoch has reportedly worked hand-in-hand to develop from scratch something specifically tailored to Apple's popular device.
There have been rumblings about media mogul Murdoch's new venture for quite some time now, and it was previously expected to debut in December. News Corp. itself has mostly kept mum about the project, although a note on thedaily.com now advertises that the publication is "coming soon," and it offers a place for users to sign up for e-mail updates.
When it is available, the virtual paper will have a lot of the bells and whistles now associated with iPad publications, like video and interactive content. It has also been said that The Daily will boast some 3D features. A broad base of topics including sports, news, arts, and opinions.
The Daily will be available for a $0.99 weekly subscription, which would basically be a new concept for the iPad. There's currently a paltry selection of magazines that readers can subscribe to on the iPad. The Economist offers a yearly subscription for $110 and Newsweek peddles issues bundled in 12- or 24-week packages.
Magazines on the device haven't exactly taken off. A lot of them, like Wired or Men's Health saw promising launches followed by steep declines in sales. There are a number of other hurdles facing iPad magazines, but the foremost is the lack of a subscription model .
At $0.99 a week and lacking a print product, The Daily is a unique beast, and it isn't going to solve this issue. But it's the first glimmering of hope that the iPad might be a print savior as it was touted to be when it launched last April.
Many sources support the reports that The Daily's launch is imminent. Forbes said that Murdoch gave some reporters an inside look at his new publication last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
"Murdoch showed off The Daily at CES dinner on Thu (which was under media embargo)," Tweeted AdAge's Edmund Lee.
Both The Washington Post and Bloomberg also said that Murdoch's iPad paper is likely coming on January 19.
In late November, another mogul - Richard Branson - unveiled his new iPad magazine, dubbed Project. It was described as "a revolutionary multimedia magazine built specially for your iPad – packed with international culture, entertainment, design, business and travel."