Is The Daily a ‘collaboration’ between Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs?

The Daily, a tablet-only news publication that News Corp is gearing up to unveil next month, has quickly gone from a secretive venture to a blockbuster media launch. And as is usually the case with such rollouts, it's also gone from being something that no one had much thought about to something that fuels an extended run of media scoops and opinions.

Since last week, there's been a steady stream of Daily revelations, most concerning the high-profile masthead The Daily has been putting together.

But one of the more interesting nuggets to emerge is the claim that The Daily is a joint effort between Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs, the respective chiefs of News Corp and Apple.

John Koblin first floated the rumor in Women's Wear Daily: "Several sources said Apple chief Steve Jobs and Murdoch have been in conversations about the project for a while," he wrote, also suggesting that Jobs is a "major fan" and not to be surprised "if you see Steve Jobs onstage with Rupert Murdoch, welcoming The Daily to the app world." The Guardian on Sunday put some weight behind the rumor, blasting out the headline "Rupert Murdoch creates 'iNewspaper' — with the help of Steve Jobs," while describing a "collaboration" between Murdoch and Jobs in the lead.

On closer inspection, though, it seems like Koblin's item was the only source for the Guardian's piece on The Daily. And some media insiders also took due, skeptical note that the byline on the story was Edward Helmore — the same reporter who erroneously reported last month both that Tina Brown wanted to be editor of Newsweek because of a rivalry with Arianna Huffington, and that Huffington had hired longtime New York Post media columnist Keith Kelly.

Since The Daily will see its debut on the iPad, some negotiations between Apple and News Corp are surely under way. We put an email and call out to Apple to clarify the extent to which Murdoch and Jobs are in fact "collaborating" on the News Corp launch. Apple indicated that its media-relations department is closed this entire week for the Thanksgiving holiday. We have a call/email out to News Corp as well.

But at least one media insider is skeptical over reports that the two moguls are buddying up.

"Jobs and Murdoch have long held a predictable antipathy toward each other," tireless Murdoch chronicler Michael Wolff told Fortune. "Jobs' entire life and oeuvre is contrary to the Murdoch view and style. Murdoch, in my presence, has described Jobs as a 'loon.' Murdoch gets special promotion for this new thing — Jobs' endorsement? iPad button? But what does Jobs get? So wtf?"

Then again, as David Carr notes, News Corp "has had some success in building a relationship with Apple. ... Murdoch was agreeing to let Apple sell Fox TV shows on iTunes for 99 cents each — over the objections of some News Corporation executives — perhaps in return for most-favored-nation status for its newspaper applications on the iPad." (Other publishers remain frustrated that they can sell only single issues, not subs, through the App store.)

And don't forget, Murdoch has been one of the iPad's most vocal advocates: "I believe that it's a game changer altogether. We'll have young people reading newspapers, we'll have different-looking types of newspapers. It's a real game changer in the presentation of news," he said in August.

Meanwhile, the latest details on The Daily trickled out this morning via Forbes' Jeff Bercovici:

I keep hearing about "3D graphics" and "data visualizations." I asked someone in the know to explain how those might figure into The Daily's coverage. "You know the guy who just won the Congressional Medal of Honor?" the source asks. "Wouldn't you like to see a 3D tactile visualization of the firefight he won the medal for? Like, you could rotate the view from any perspective, go forward and back in time, et cetera, like a video game in replay mode?"

That does sound pretty cool — and massively work-intensive to produce. If The Daily catches on, it could change the face of newspapers (or whatever we're calling them) in a way we haven't seen since USA Today introduced the world to color infographics.

The project could also face some publishing 1.0 issues concerning its name, Bercovici reports; IMG Publishing, which owns fashion industry paper The Daily, is "very, very concerned" about News Corp's identically named tablet tabloid, and pondering potential legal challenges.
(AP Photo/Tony Avelar)