Rupert Murdoch Creates the Perfect Digital Newspaper for Fifty Years Ago

Speaking of dogs (arf!), ThinkProgress is treating this memo from Rupert Murdoch’s iPad Editor like a chew toy:

Folks, Egypt is over — time for us to get focused on covering America. We need to get out there and start finding more compelling stories from around the country — not just scraping the web and the wires, but getting out on the ground and reporting.

Find me an amazing human story at a trial the rest of the media is missing. Find me a school district where the battle over reform is being fought and tell the human tales. Find a town that is going to be unincorporated because it’s broke. Find me a story of corruption and malfeasance in a state capitol that no one has found. Find me something new, different, exclusive and awesome. Find me the oldest dog in America, or the richest man in South Dakota. Force the new White House press secretary to download The Daily for the first time because everyone at the gaggle is asking about a story we broke. Get in front of a story and make it ours — force the rest of the media to follow us.

It’s good stories that will keep people coming back to The Daily — we’ve assembled a crack news team, so let’s show the world what we can do.

Singling out the dog story for mockery is something of a stretch — this memo could just as easily have been issued by NPR, or any general-interest publication.

And that’s the problem. Unless you’re NPR or the New Yorker — with an engaging style of delivery that transcends the subject — we could care less about most of the items on this list. Give us a four-section newspaper, and three sections are servicing that dog’s needs before we’ve even bothered to read them. Newspapers are failing because audiences have atomized their interests, and a self-contained “digital newspaper” falls prey to the same conditions.

If you’d like to mock The Daily, mock it for pretending the Web doesn’t exist, that you can still serve the world within the borders of one outlet. But don’t mock it just because Rupert’s behind it. That story’s older than the dog.

Editor Of Murdoch’s ‘The Daily’: ‘Egypt Is Over,’ Find Me Something ‘Awesome’ Like ‘The Oldest Dog In America’ [ThinkProgress]

nojo
4:27 pm • Tuesday • February 15, 2011
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Rupert Murdoch Creates the Perfect Digital Newspaper for Fifty Years Ago

Editor Of Murdoch’s ‘The Daily’: ‘Egypt Is Over,’ Find Me Something ‘Awesome’ Like ‘The Oldest Dog In America’ [ThinkProgress]

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