Its founders believe that The Daily's success will depend on the quality of its journalism, Tech Crunch's Robin Wauters reported based his notes from an interview with James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert and currently Chairman and CEO of News Corporation Europe and Asia. Murdoch was interviewed on stage at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany.

"Murdoch touched on everything from its relationship with Google to paywalls for online newspapers, iPad applications and more", Wauters preannounced.

So, James Murdoch said The Daily is going to be launched in the next few weeks (or at least he hopes so) and it is going to be "a brand new piece of journalism. It will succeed or fail on the journalism part, not the bells and whistles".

The main objective - he said - is to provide high quality journalism at an affordable price (126 journalists employed and 99 US cents a week).

Dealing with "storytelling", News Corp is a mix of media businesses, he underlined: traditional and digital business areas are very related to one another and a distinction between being an old or new economy company does not really need to continue. Nonetheless, the company's principal revenues come from digital and paid television. Even if he declared News Corp is still investing in traditional publishing, the paper-based part of the business comprises just 15 percent.

Murdoch also talked about the paid-for business model News Corp applies to its newspapers' websites. "If you're going to monetize something online, don't give it away for free" is the core of his economic strategy.

"Today, in Europe, 70 percent of our revenue comes directly from the customer. That's a durable and powerful business, that lets you avoid cycles. Online, this is particularly true, because with all that inventory you lose the pricing power, because it's impossible to create scarcity. Selling something at a fair price to fewer customers is a better place to be in", he said.

Answering to a question about whether Google is a thief or a reliable partner, Murdoch said that compared to the past, the conversation with Google is much more constructive now. The main question, in his opinion, remains how to get compensated for copyrighted content.
"The fundamental thing is we need publishers to start asserting the value of copyrighted content much more, in general. Because if publishers end up no longer investing in quality journalism, the media will be up for grabs for governments and oligarchs, and who wants that?"

Concluding by talking about the future of journalism and the need for journalists he stated: "Professional journalism is more important than ever. It's really the only way that you can have a true dialog in a democracy".

News Corp is now facing many challenges: as well as the highly-anticipated launch of The Daily, in the UK two main issues for the company are the verdict on BskyB merger and the handling of the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

Source: TechCrunch