Five days of The Daily

Front page of The Daily from last weekIf you're in the news business, the big industry buzz of the past week was the launch of The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's new iPad-only news app. Even those who don't have iPads were chiming in on The Daily, good or bad. I can't recall this kind of interest in a news product in a long time.

If you're a regular reader of this site, you know I posted back in November that I was tired of pre-launch hate for The Daily, which only picked up steam with Wednesday's launch. I thought some of that post-launch criticism was justified (particularly with technical issues and thin hard-news report) while much was blind hate toward Murdoch and something different. After Day 1, I shared a quick update to that November post and said I'd follow-up after a few days of thorough review.

An iTunes-style story carousel is a great way to scan storiesAnd?

I feel like a piece of swaying seaweed writing this but I after 5 days of reading, I have a love-hate relationship with The Daily. One minute I'm thrilled, the next I'm shaking my head in disgust.

I understand The Daily is not supposed to be The New York Times or even Huffington Post -- it's a tabloid for tablets. "The Daily" is not a publication of record. It skims the news and makes no bones about ignoring important news that for whatever reason doesn't make the cut.

Presentation is frequently striking, which is magnified on a high-resolution platform like the iPad.But too often The Daily seems thrown together, with digital tricks often inserted at the expense of relevant information.

I think The Daily is a product with tons of promise that surprises me enough each day to keep me coming back. But there are some flaws that I consider serious in light of The Daily's $25 million pre-launch costs and $500,000 per week operating costs moving forward.

So, follow me as I run through some highlights and lowlights, as well as a few suggestions:

Highlights:

• The first two weeks are free to read (thanks to Verizon sponsorship) but Murdoch has said he'll charge 99 cents per week thereafter. That's 15 cents per day. I challenge anyone to find a better value for a paid digital-news product, even one with some serious flaws to address.
• The visual packaging is striking. Most pages look like a nicely designed magazine. I was often reminded of some tricks that first surfaced a few months ago in the Virgin Project monthly tablet magazine, which I still believe sets the bar on what tablet publications can be.
• The iPad excels at presenting photos that have depth and invite you to spend time absorbing all the information. Click on this thumbnail to see a larger version in which the rocks seem to jump off the page.I love the photo presentation. Others have criticized the use of vertical vs. landscape mode to autoload galleries but I think it's a nice touch that takes advantage of the platform. And when the right photo gets size, it's dramatic. Case in point is a recent "Battle for Cairo" cover story in which thrown rocks seemed to jump off screen.
• The sports coverage generally has been a strong point. Main coverage this first week has understandably focused on the Super Bowl but there has been sparse coverage of non-Big Four American sports. I particularly liked the daily animated look at key plays the Packers and Steelers were likely to use in the Super Bowl. And I like the page that allowed me to customize content according to my favorite teams in the Big Four American sports.
• Because The Daily is centered around an app and not the wider Internet, headlines are written in true tabloid fashion, not with an SEO bent. That's refreshing.
• Almost all advertising was interactive, including a Pepsi ad that doubled as a cheesy game.
• "Share" pages include links to Facebook, Twitter and the ability to add text or audio comments.The commenting tools are a mixed bag. I love the option of audio comments and think they've done a nice job with Facebook and Twitter integration. But there was no effort to highlight "hot" stories that either were widely shared or had lively conversations.
• The customized weather and horoscopes are nice touches.
  I found the Editorials to be a strong point. I didn't read them all top to bottom but enjoyed the diversity of topics.
• I love the History page, which appeared on two of the five days. On Sunday, The Daily gave us a look back at Anwar Sadat's assassination and Mubarak's rise to power. I was reminded of Newsweek's excellence in this area in recent years.
• The daily crossword and Sudoku puzzles are interactive and allow you to compete against other Daily readers.
• Embedding videos in stories makes great use of the platform. I had horrible video streaming, even loading, issues on Day 1 but performance has been great since. And the videos embedded within related content have added context.This is a Murdoch product, so there's a deep gossip section with lots of photos. It is what it is, and Richard Johnson of Page 6 fame is a presence every day.
• Embedded video is a no-brainer for the platform, and The Daily has done a nice job of optimizing load times and video lengths. The app crashed often on Day 1 and some on Day 2, but sparingly thereafter. Considering how much intense content-loading is occurring, props to The Daily crew for optimizing the experience.

Lowlights:

• I can't find an archive, so each edition is overwritten daily. The only way I've found to archive anything is to "clip" articles of interest to read later. I like that feature but really would like to have at least a seven-day archive in order to see what I might have missed. If you're going to ask people to pay for your product, don't you want to help them read it?
• The "exclusives" have been mostly pathetic. I cringed when I saw an "Only in The Daily" label on a "World of NerdCraft" video piece on people Example of a Daily "exclusive." Ugh.who re-enact World of Warcraft in real life. This is what $500,000 per week is buying?
• Outside of some of the sports coverage, the reporting has mostly been thin, in some cases very thin. Even with the tabloid, quick-read format, some stories deserve more detail. (Here's a Tumblr feed that indexes each day's stories to give you an idea of the mix).
• I found myself yearning for "related links" from many stories. Virgin's Project excels at that, but The Daily makes sparse use of one of the great selling points of a digital product. (One related link Sunday was a nice surprise, to a 30-plus page military manual on social-media guidelines).
• The automated pagination is very good, but on occasion headlines cut off in mid-sentence. It's no big deal for 99% of readers (I'll leave room for the 1% who insist on perfection in everything but their own lives) but it's something I've noticed on several occasions.
• The daily video that loads at launch and highlights the top three or four topics is worthless. The hosts are generic and uninspiring. A video featuring a talking head greets you each day, highlighting the top three or four items of interest. That feature isn't valuable to me and was the cause of more than a few app crashes.
• Some stories pull in Twitter feeds related to the topic, which is cool, but often the packaging pulls in only one Tweet. If you're lucky, the Tweet adds to the story. Unfortunately, since the feeds are raw, sometimes the sole entries are blather from fans using the hashtag or Twitter handle in question.
• Many stories are only a few paragraphs long. That'd be fine for briefs, but I've seen at least a half-dozen items that feature superb packaging, bold headlines but only a few paragraphs. Case in point was Sunday's "exclusive" follow-up on a Daily "exclusive" about John Hinkley's girlfriend. This was a classic case of milking a story that didn't get traction the first time around.
• Live Twitter feeds are a good idea, but the execution is mixed.Reviews (mostly movies) are only a few paragraphs. I get that for negative reviews on minor releases but would like to see a bit more beef when the topic makes sense.

There's clearly work to be done to make The Daily a mainstream hit. Murdoch bought a 30-second ad for The Daily in the Super Bowl, so no doubt non-journalists and techies will be introduced to the app. And it's been front and center in the iTunes store. I do think the tabloid-style story mix will bode well for a mainstream audience, But I think it needs more hard news -- and deeper takeouts -- to keep the news junkies tuning in and to give it some punch during times when average Americans really do want to read about faraway places like Egypt.

Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine has estimated The Daily needs 750,000 subscribers over the next year to make a go of it. That's about 10% of all iPad users, which is not a realistic target. Murdoch is promising Android versions (and presumably other tablet OS's like Blackberry) soon, so that will no doubt improve The Daily's chances of survival.

I think The Daily has been a great experiment and hope -- really hope -- it survives. But as a Wall Street Journal print and online subscriber who has appreciated the focus and investment Murdoch has brought to that brand over the last year, I'm confused at what The Daily wants to be. Let's hope someone figures that out before it's too late.