Will Murdoch's iPad newspaper make money?

The demise of newspaper in its print form is imminent. For a media baron like News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch, it makes sense to embrace the new iPad technology offered by Apple to churn out news for a price of about 99 cents a week.

News Corp's iPad-only newspaper called The Daily will soon hit the market, say media reports suggesting that more than 100 journalists are already on the job on the 26th floor of its building in New York. Pete Picton, an online editor from the Sun and Sasha Frere-Jones, a former music critic at the New Yorker are some of the names circulating as people roped in for the project.

Murdoch, the Australian-born media mogul, who was sour with the free online media is determined to charge the readers for the news. His new $30-million project should make a headway, if not instant success. The leverage will be the service provider who should explore the ways of charging the customers.

The idea of charging for news, however, comes at a time when the newspaper is fast changing from a generic to specific. The professionals and readers vary depending on their jobs or passion. Those in development sector rue the fact that the mainstream newspapers, whether print or online, ignore the basic sector-specific requirements.

On the contrary, the general readership is increasingly moving towards customized news portals without which they cannot begin the day in office. This applies to all work force involved in financial and information technology sector. There's an online newspaper or web portal that caters almost every micro field on the earth. Most of them are providing free content much disliked by many newspapers but some of them are into providing customized content at a premium as well.

The question now is how far the new experiment of Murdoch will go? Will it go diversified in hundreds of verticals to support the mainstream newspaper or will it engage the smaller players to meet customized content requirements?

Barring the pricing factor, the idea of Daily should bring down the cost of production for News Corp but how quickly will the company move to close the expensive print versions remains to be seen.