Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs will appear next week with News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to introduce The Daily, a digital newspaper for Apple's iPad tablet computer that Murdoch has called his company's "most exciting project."
The event is tentatively planned for Jan. 19 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, according to a source familiar with the matter. News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.
The plan amounts to a coup for News Corp., allowing the media giant to share in some of Apple's cachet as it launches a new product that many hope will offer a template for publishers in an industry starved for new online business models.
Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr declined to comment for this story.
"This is a big deal because everyone in the media is concerned about Steve Jobs having too much control over their customers," said Larry Kramer, the former head of digital media at CBS Corp. (CBS) and now an adjunct professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
"But Murdoch is smart to partner with Jobs on something like this because Jobs is great at truly understanding the consumer and how the consumer wants to interact with content digitally. Also, he's got an ecommerce platform that is one of the only games in town for monetizing online content, so you have to deal with him."
In addition to changing how people consume media, Jobs has rewritten the script for garnering attention on new tech products with his dramatic unveilings. Apple's events have gained notoriety for generating outsized buzz on the Internet and throughout the media. Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) Chief Executive Brian Roberts recently indicated an ambition to hold similar events for his company's cable TV innovations.
News of a joint appearance between the highest profile CEO in tech and a titan of the traditional media business comes after Murdoch reportedly showed The Daily to select attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show, which recently concluded in Las Vegas, where he noted the spirit of cooperation between media content creators and digital technology companies.
While details about The Daily have been sparse, news of high-profile journalist hires have trickled out as News Corp. has amassed an editorial staff for the venture. The company reportedly is willing to invest $30 million in the project.
"It's important to build something like this starting from scratch that isn't tied to any legacy media property," Kramer said. "We have to create the right product for this new medium, and my biggest concern about this is whether it will be too tied to the newspaper legacy."
The launch comes as publishers have struggled to replace losses from their declining print businesses with profits from websites, where advertising revenue growth has been slow. Efforts to generate more subscription revenue from online publishing also have been slow to yield significant gains, leaving the industry scrambling for new business models.
"Many publishers are convinced that the iPad will bring a new opportunity for them to charge consumers for access to content," said Steve Brill, co-founder of Journalism Online LLC, a venture aimed at helping publishers forge online subscription business. "I think anything that moves the ball forward in terms of getting people to pay for good content online is a good thing."
Meanwhile, News Corp.'s new foray into digital media comes at a time when a previous attempt at monetizing the Internet is struggling. Myspace, the social networking site it acquired in 2005, just laid off nearly half its workforce in an attempt to revive itself after being eclipsed by the rapid rise of Facebook Inc.
"[Murdoch] jumped into Myspace--that hasn't worked out so well, but he was smart to be there," said Neil Braun, the dean of Pace University's Lubin School of Business and former chief executive of Viacom Inc.'s (VIA) entertainment divsion. "The idea that a platform like the iPad can create an opportunity for new media brands makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm not at all surprised that somebody like Rupert Murdoch would be the first person to jump in and build something there."
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