The Daily Is About as Popular as a Small Midwestern Newspaper

Numbers unearthed by Bloomberg for Murdoch's iPad-only publication aren't so great

The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad only newspaper is doing about as well as a small midwestern newspaper. Subscription numbers aren't so hot, as Bloomberg's Edmund Lee reports. "News Corp.’s the Daily is averaging about 120,000 readers a week, or less than a quarter the number the company said it needs to make money, according to an advertising executive working with the iPad-only publication." As Bloomberg points out, that's on par with papers like Toledo's The Blade and Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle. Not only are the numbers unimpressive on a national media scale, they don't hold up to Murdoch's projections. "The Daily’s audience is short of the 500,000 subscribers that Murdoch said in February would allow the publication to break even. After the free trial, subscribers pay 99 cents per week or $39.99 a year to read the publication," Lee writes.