Trailing sparks of intense controversy since the day it was announced, The Daily goes live today. The Daily is the news app created exclusively for the iPad by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

The only thing not in doubt is Murdoch’s determination to make the venture work: word on the street is that he’s invested $30 million in it. He told Fox Business that The Daily was his “No. 1 most exciting project.” James Murdoch, who does not always see eye to eye with his old man, described it as “our flagship project.”

In addition to breathtaking techno-innovation the money went into the best journalistic talent money can buy, like New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, TV producer Steve Alperin, and Richard Johnson, Mister Page Six himself.

What has stirred so much debate? For one thing, restricting the news app to one dedicated device flies in the face of the shibboleth that information wants to be free.”News Corp.’s expectations for the The Daily seem pegged to the hope that convenience, novelty, and that old Apple chic will convince users to go against the now-established assumption that online news and feature content, which is so widely available for free, is not worth paying for,” comments Christopher Cocca in Huffington Post.

Cocca also cites another issue that seems counterintuitive: the publication’s subscription model and a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall. “Why part with a dollar a day for The Daily‘s curation of the news and other media that you and your friends on Facebook and Twitter are already curating for free? You already pay for your internet connection, your data plan, your cable. Will The Daily be such a useful digest of everything you’re interested in to be worth the extra 30 bucks a month?” A dollar a day? Murdoch has publicly stated it will be a dollar a week – $0.99 to be precise ($39.99 for a one-year subscription).

Interestingly, one aspect that is definitely not controversial will be the political slant: there isn’t going to be any.  Despite the rightist bias of Murdoch’s holdings like Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post,from all we can reckon he’s going to leave his heavy right fist off this operation.

The launch event was held in New York’s Guggenheim Museum attended by Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet services. Originally it was to be held on the left coast with Steve Jobs presiding, but his health prohibited his attendance. Too bad; he might have answered a lot of questions and extinguish some of the fires of controversy that The Daily has kindled.

For information visit thedaily.com and check out the coolissimo video below.

Richard Curtis

Cliff Guren and Pam Turner, executives of Skiff, the recently developed e-book platform, have just announced the company’s acquisition by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

In a review of e-book readers last January we cited Dan Nosowitz, Gizmodo’s reviewer, who gave Skiff high marks for beauty, slimness, weight, screen size and functionality: “I just got a chance to play with the big-screened, touchscreened Skiff Reader, which is targeted at periodicals. It’s incredibly thin, incredibly light, and they’ve even got a color screen prototype—Kindle and Nook should be scared.”

Kindle and Nook may not have been scared then but perhaps they will be now. Rupert Murdoch has given numerous hints that he wants to develop his own e-book reader(See Press Baron Murdoch Ready to Get E-Ink on His Fingers?)  and now he has one off the shelf.

Here’s the notification emailed by Guren to publishing partners.
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Dear Skiff Publishing Partner,

I’m writing to share with you that Skiff’s publishing platform has been acquired by News Corp. As News Corp. announced yesterday, this acquisition is part of News Corp.’s commitment to premium digital journalism and to developing new ways for publishers to monetize their content online and via a wide range of devices.

We are pleased that News Corp. has recognized the value of Skiff’s accomplishments and we attribute that in part to the fine partners that have worked with us to this point.

In connection with this sale, Skiff, LLC will be winding down its current operations. We fully expect News Corp. may want to consider opportunities to renew the relationship we’ve had with you at Skiff. In the meantime, we appreciate your continued discretion under the confidentiality agreement that we have in place.

While some members of the Skiff team will be joining this effort, Pam Turner and I will be heading off to pursue other opportunities. As a result, I wanted to let you know that Lee Shirani (lshirani@skiff.com) will be following up with you.

Pam and I deeply value your support. We consider ourselves privileged to part of the publishing community. Thank you… We look forward to working with you again.

My personal contact information going forward is as follows [Deleted]:
Regards,

Cliff Guren and Pam Turner

Cliff Guren
Vice President, Content Acquisition

The Wall Street Journal, that bastion of capitalist journalism, has concluded that the Information Wants To Be Free movement is tantamount to the end of civilization, and the paper will begin charging micropayments for articles and subscriptions, according to Financial Times‘s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Kenneth Li. Robert Thomson, WSJ’s managing editor, says the “sophisticated” scheme will be launched in the fall.

“The move will position the Journal as the first big newspaper title to adopt a model many are studying cautiously as they seek to reduce dependence on plunging advertising revenues,” say the Financial Times reporters. You can read about it in WSJ plans micro-fees for online articles.

What makes the Journal’s proposal sophisticated? For the answer we turn to a recently created venture called Journalism Online, whose tenets are being studied by a number of newspapers in the hope of finding a solution to the drying up of ad revenue watering holes and the defection of subscribers to online news sources. Here are the essential talking points from Journalism Online’s press release:

• First, Journalism Online will develop a password-protected website with one easy-to-use account through which consumers will be able to purchase annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes, and single articles from multiple publishers.
• Second, Journalism Online will aggressively market all-inclusive annual or monthly subscriptions for those consumers who want to pay one fee to access all of the JOI-member publishers’ content. Revenues will be shared among publishers.
• Third, a key initiative of Journalism Online will be to negotiate wholesale licensing and royalty fees with intermediaries such as search engines and other websites that currently base much of their business models on referrals of readers to the original content on newspaper, magazine and online news websites.
• Fourth, Journalism Online will provide reports to member publishers on which strategies and tactics are achieving the best results in building circulation revenue while maintaining the traffic necessary to support advertising revenue.

Bloggers – pay particular attention to point #3, because it puts you on notice that you may not be able to quote, or even access, content without paying a toll. As a fair user of such content I have some serious concerns about this restriction. And, as a crusty cynic, I am quite skeptical that a news publication’s content can be so airtightly controlled. The effort to restrict it might have the ironic upshot of forcing bloggers to become pirates. Even those of us who agree that information wants to be paid for may, out of self-defense, become Informationwantstobefreeites.

Click here to read the venture’s press release detailing its business model and operational format.

The Journal‘s micropay innovation may be only the first step to a shift to an all-digital news delivery format instituted by Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp of which WSJ is a component. We recently conjectured about Murdoch’s keen interest in ordering an e-reader to carry News Corp’s papers and magazines, or developing one of his own.

Richard Curtis