Six months of The Daily

The Daily jumped on news of the Washington, D.C, earthquake, remaking its front page in the afternoon. Sadly, the main image was animated to simulate the shaking of an earthuake.It's been a little more than 6 months since The Daily first arrived on iPads, stirring up enthusiasm for a new opportunity for newspapers.

Shortly after launch, I reviewed The Daily and found it had some major issues but a lot of upside.

So, where are we at six months later?

I'd say the real news is that The Daily is still around.

Post launch, I read The Daily nearly daily until Rupert Murdoch put up a paywall sometime in the Spring. Frankly the interactive Sudoku puzzle was the big draw pulling me back day after day, so I subscribed for a few weeks, but then simply got too busy to hunt it down each day.

An improved index page gives prominence to the hard-news in The Daily.I recently resubscribed, on a week-to-week basis, to see what's up. The key changes are better navigation and sleeker design; optimized video that loads fast and streams cleanly; no app crashes; a new weekly Travel section; page remakes for big news during the day; and more interactive features such as You Write the Caption and invites to submit audio memories for stories like the 9-11 anniversary.

Key weaknesses remain: Dearth of exclusive or investigative stories, cheesiness in inappropriate places (for example the D.C. earthquake photo on the front page on both Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning was animated so that it shook) and just a general lack of staff-produced content that screams "read me."
The striking page drew attention to a powerful interactive feature. My guess is this reader-created oral history will be very powerful.
It's hard to know how many people are reading The Daily because the Murdochs haven't released circulation figures. But there are signs the audience is sizable.

The Daily Twitter feed has 95,000 followers and stories routinely draw more than 100 comments. Still, the Daily app isn't cracking Apple's Top 200 iPad apps, either in terms of downloads or gross, despite some high profile promotion in the App Store.

As I noted back in February, I hope The Daily succeeds despite its enormous operating costs. I may not like everything about it, but there's a lot I do like. Just not enough to prompt me to pop for an annual subscription.