On the Huffington Post, Michael Calderone reports that a number of executives have been leaving Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper The Daily lately. Latest to go is art director for news Gabriel Dance it, who represents the seventh executive to leave the paper in recent months.
However The Daily does not see anything unusual in this number of staffers leaving:
"Seven employees turning over out of a staff of more than a hundred in a nine month period sounds perfectly normal to us,” a Daily spokesperson said in an email. “On a personal note, we are fans of Gabe and wish him the best."
Some onlookers have taken these departures, along with poor reviews of The Daily application and its relatively slow start, to mean that the paper is in trouble. However, others who have left the paper think that it is too early yet to tell whether The Daily will succeed or fail.
But whether it succeeds or fails, The Daily has already changed the nature of iPad publishing with its ambitious attempt to roll out a daily iPad-only newspaper. It has set an example that other publications will do their best to learn from—whether what they’re learning is what to do or what not to do.
I’d take whatever the HuffPo says in regards to anything Murdoch related with a large grain of salt.