Yesterday, News Corp. launched The Daily, the very first newspaper exclusive to the iPad. The media company helmed by Rupert Murdoch, spent $30m developing the app, which users can subscribe to for 99 cents per week or $39.99 per year. Verizon has partnered with News Corp. to sponsor the newspaper’s launch, so right now readers will get the first two weeks free. A team of reporters from New York and Los Angeles, supported by freelance writers, will produce the digital newspaper. Each issue will have about 100 iPad pages that offer articles on news, entertainment, culture, opinion, gossip, sports and tech. Every page can be viewed vertically or horizontally and features interactive elements like video or 360-degree panoramic photos that readers can scroll around.

This pay model differs from a lot of the current iPad newspaper apps, most of which offer at least some content for free. The Daily will have to compete with free apps from The New York Times and USA Today, whose app is quite well done, though can it go through periods of annoying bugginess. Murdoch is hoping that The Daily‘s original content and the inclusion of various multimedia elements that take advantage of the iPad’s interactive capabilities, will compel readers to open their wallet. Reader subscriptions will make up the majority of the revenue in the beginning, but executives hope that advertising will account for about 50% of the revenue in the future. “We can and we must make the business of news gathering and editing viable again,” states Murdoch, quoted in an AP article covering The Daily launch event.

So, will The Daily be a success?

Digital content strategist, Ian Betteridge, weighs in with his review for The Guardian: “What will ultimately decide whether The Daily lives or dies, though, is the quality of its content. Like any kind of new publication, The Daily is going to take some time to find its feet. At the moment, it feels in places more like a newspaper created by a slightly dull committee rather than something with the kind of personality and viewpoint that truly great publications have…But whether the Daily is good enough to convince the hundreds of thousands of subscribers it needs to break even is another matter.”