Miss Charlie Brown in The Daily (Brian Zac/The Daily)

As one of the richest dogs in America, there are very few things that get me down. “Live every day like it’s actually seven days in human years” is my motto, so I try not to let the little stuff bother me. Someone forgot to put out beef tartare for my supper? That’s fine. Constantly being overshadowed by that little Maltese ass-licker Trouble until he “mysteriously” died? Doesn’t bother me in the least. Miss Charlie Brown of South Dakota does not sweat the small stuff, is what I’m saying.

But I was absolutely devastated to find out that Rupert Murdoch’s iPaw publication, The Daily, was shuttering its ... pages? I don’t know if that’s the right word. Maybe closing its “digital doors?” No ... that sounds like something Jeff Jarvis’s pooch would say.

Anyway, The Daily was done, at least the version that had rocketed me to stardom thanks to a series of seemingly random events: the leaking of an internal memo from EIC Jesse Angelo demanding, “find me the oldest dog in America, or the richest man in South Dakota,” the subsequent challenge by Stephen Colbert to find “the richest dog in South Dakota,” and The Daily’s seemingly bottomless coffers, which allowed a reporter and a photographer to fly all the way out to meet my family and me last year.

For that, I will be forever in The Daily’s debt. Well, not literally. I could probably buy and sell that money-suck of an app a million times over at this point. Let’s do the math: Rupert Murdoch’s infamous anti-Midas touch when it comes to all things confusing and electronic (and hey, buddy, I hear you on that ... I’m still scared of the sentient Roomba) was losing $30 million a year. I’m worth $130 million. And in English cocker spaniel years, I’ll be a dead dog before I run out of cash. Honestly, I’m not using all these dollar bills to buy a solid gold canine grille that reads “Hot Bitch.” The money is just sitting there.

So at this point, Mr. Murdoch, I’d like to formally make a proposal to purchase The Daily brand.

Because here’s the thing: I recognize quality content when I see it. Like Zach Baron’s gonzo journey to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is the first story I remember reading in The Daily. (Yes, we pooches can read. And we send grammatically correct texts to each other when you aren’t looking, which at this point puts us leagues ahead of most human tweens.)

Or how about Michelle Ruiz’s profile of the gay couple who pampered their baby doll in a way that makes my owner’s treatment of me look perfectly sane? So creepy. It really hit the sweet spot between “totally fascinating/disturbing” and “kind of adorable.” In fact, that could have been The Daily’s motto. Also, The Daily was just plain useful. I never knew how dehydrated my owner was until I looked at that Pantone color chart and compared it to the water I was drinking out of the toilet.

Your writers and editors weren’t the problem, Mr. Murdoch. They were some of the most daring, inventive journalists I’ve seen in all my years (the exact number of which your publication was kind enough not to print). They pioneered drone journalism! Sometimes one got the sense that these brave men and women would do anything for a great story, even if it meant sacrificing their parents’ untroubled slumber. You don’t know how many times I have personally felt worried for vlogger Justin Rocket Silverman’s safety and well-being. The tasering episode. The one where he embedded with female paintball aficionados who took the game a little too seriously. Oh, and that time he let the Navy sic their attack dogs on him. Anyone who spends his days playing with tiger cubs and his nights with swing-state swingers should be given the Anderson Cooper Medal of WTF-ness. It was indicative of the whole site’s ethos ... tracking down the most dangerous/darling trend stories ever. (Though I hope Mr. Silverman keeps a bottle of Purell on hand at all times.)

You know, at times, The Daily seemed less like a News Corp. entity than a collage of the more intellectually stimulating reading material out there. David Knowles’s investigation into the men behind pink slime? Good stuff. And Benjamin Carlson’s look into Delphian, the $42k boarding school for the children of Scientologists, could have been written by a 2010 Tony Ortega. Do you see Emma Barker’s profile of fashion’s fallen star, Luis Estevez? That would have incited a bidding war between Vogue, The New Yorker and WWD, had it been freelance.

Then there were the straight-out amazing Vice-meets-The Atlantic long-reads, like the brilliant pieces on reclusive Trapper Keeper artist Lisa Frank, the dirty cartel of Tide Detergent snatchers, the abuse of mug shots by our own criminal justice system, and the where-are-they-now about the Nazi teeny-boppers turned hippie stoners.

Not to mention Monday’s amazing front-page jailhouse interview with the Amish bishop who’s behind bars for unsolicited beard-snipping. Where do you guys even come up with this stuff?

But here’s the thing, Rupert: with all these amazing stories, you were so protective of your content that you made it impossible for most people to even read it! I mean, I’m a dog, and even I know that an Internet newspaper needs to have an RSS feed. Did you somehow think that if you only allowed readers to access stories via a URL, and just forgot about having a landing site, you’d somehow be able to thwart those pesky teens intent on freeing all the precious words on the web? SOPA failed, you’re closing the first iPad paper because of your own hacking scandal, and you’re blocking your stories on Google News?
All I can say is: woof.

So Rupert, let’s make a deal: I’ve got some great ideas for reinventing the paper, and I’ll even take MySpace off your hands as a show of good faith.

And if you don’t want to do business with a dog, I’ll just hire all these talented writers myself for my own paper. Sorry, I don’t see your noncompete extending to The South Dakota Doggie Daily.

I know you gave it your best shot, but that dog just didn’t bark. Who do you think the world will love more: a tired old dog that can’t learn new tricks, or moi?

Sincerely,
Miss Charlie Brown of South Dakota

P.S. I’m the second richest dog in America, by the way. No need for the arbitrary “South Dakota” title. Once Gunther IV goes to that great fire hydrant in the sky, you better watch your back. Who let the dogs out, Rupert? You did.
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The app seems likely to recur as long as the magazine continues putting media-savvy, and young, talent on the cover (the inside of the book obviously remains unaffected and unremarked-upon by the app). Next month's rumored cover girl Rihanna--who's so social-media savvy that she leaked news of her cover on Twitter--seems more likely to draw in $.99 from tech-savvy youth than, say, Marion Cotillard. A Vogue representative told the Observer, though, that "while the Vogue Cover Exclusive app is made for the 'Twitter generation,' the decision of who appears on the print cover will continue to be made as it always has been."

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

This weekend, the Live Worms Gallery in San Francisco will display photographs of the Apple products that Tompert gleefully destroyed, the Los Angeles Times' Culture Monster blog reports. 

The result is visceral and striking. The pictures display, among other images, an iPhone 3G that met up with the business end of a handgun, a bunch of iPod Nanos flattened on a train track, and an iPad — seemingly "indestructible" —  that needed a sledgehammer and a soldering torch before its interior was sufficiently dismantled.

The Modern Art History 101 student in us would make the inevitable Duchamp comparison — particularly to his Readymades, of a bicycle wheel or a shovel. Others will cry metaphor and call the series of photographs a criticism of our device-obsessed culture.

But perhaps there is another underlying inspiration behind the exhibition. Tompert is a former Apple employee, the article reveals. 

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234 

Also, New York will ensure that print subscribers have access to the iPad counterpart, though the description on the iTunes store warns that this feature has not yet been fully extended. "If you currently subscribe to New York magazine in print you will soon be able to access the iPad edition FREE," the blurb reads. "Sorry for the delay, but it will be worth your wait!"

No word on whether there will be original content for the New York iPad app, but we're thinking it'll include some sort of wild, tricked-out version of the print edition's much-copied Approval Matrix, fully hyperlinked. Maybe that's enough to win over the iPad-owning subscribers as they wait patiently for their promised free issues.

The "delay" for subscribers, though? Might have to plot that somewhere near the top-left. 

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

We read the whole thing on a browser, as most people probably did. Anderson and Wolff each take up one half of the screen with their respective takes. Anderson's approach blames consumers for the web's perceived over-ness, citing our need for specialized apps as opposed to browsers. "You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service. You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone." Wolff hinges his piece on the idea that Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs resemble old-style media moguls in the way they control their content, separating themselves from the Google approach and, in turn, from the web in general. "While Google may have controlled traffic and sales, Apple controls the content itself," Wolff writes. "Indeed, it retains absolute approval rights over all third-party applications. Apple controls the look and feel and experience. And, what’s more, it controls both the content-delivery system (iTunes) and the devices (iPods, iPhones, and iPads) through which that content is consumed."

Elsewhere in the "Web is Dead" package, O'Reilly emails Anderson about the "great dance" between an open web and the closed web. "Openness is where innovation happens; closedness is where value is captured," he writes, explaining the value of each version of the Internet. Battelle, however, is not buying Wired's death knell. In fact, he's "particularly unhappy" that everyone is proclaiming the browser-based web to be a thing of the past. "I for one think the 'open, searchable, common platform' is not dead, and no one should be planning a party on its presumed grave," he writes. "It’s simply the most elegant approach to creating the most good in the world, and heralding its end strikes me as not only premature, but also shortsighted. Is that grumpy enough for ya?"

The pundits mostly agree that the way we've browsed in the past is on its way out and there's no doubt that the entire issue will look great on Wired's Scott Dadich-designed iPad app. Anderson even sneaks a plug for his magazine's new platform into the story—"check out Wired's cool new iPad app!" he says parenthetically. Yes, we get it — apps over browsers, the web is dead, etcetera. But another reminder of your prized app? Perhaps a bit much, Chris. It's not free, you know.

"Going forward it’s going to require all kinds of different approaches, including, probably the most significant, the elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it with PDFs. The iPad is the real example of almost replicating a newspaper on an instrument."

Strangely enough, other people who aren't in the middle of bankruptcy hearings for their media companies have said that putting PDFs on the iPad is a huge step backwards.

(via Reuters)

"Of course it's good news! It's great news!" Ms. Leive said.

"The reason that that 73,000 figure is exciting to me is that people want to look at magazines that way and they're willing to pay for it," she added. "Can you sketch out exact projections based on that? Of course not."

Ms. Leive said that her team, which won the first ever "Magazine of the Year" ASME this year, is currently developing an app for Glamour.

"The print business, at this point, still supports everything we do, but we're moving forward," she said. "This is something that readers are going to be paying attention to, and we want to be there."

A Glamour app is in "R&D" right now, she said.

"The magazine stuff looks incredible. The photography is just gorgeous. The resolution is amazing. And it's actually a pretty satisfying way to read a long article if it's formatted properly; you can't just take pdfs and plop them on the iPad," Ms. Leive said.

Does Ms. Leive expect her numbers to be as good as those of her Condé colleague and Wired editor Chris Anderson?

"Listen, it's Wired," she said. "Are readers of every magazine going to respond exactly that way right out of the gate? No. I'm sure they have more readers with iPads right now than I do."

"It is setting the bar high," she added.

What about an iPad app of the year award?

"Considering we haven't designed our app yet, I think that would be a little over ambitious," she said.

"I'd like to sell a few downloads first."