The Daily has a chance to be a significant innovation

Did Rupert Murdoch change the news business today, or did he just put another toy out there for mobile users to play with? At 14 cents a day, plenty of iPad owners will give The Daily a few touches. If I had an iPad, I would have spent a little at the iTunes Store today. But would I keep going back?

News executives are sitting in meetings everywhere brainstorming ways to monetize digital news in a significant way. At newspapers, digital is 90 percent of the conversation but still no more than 10 percent of the revenue. The Wall Street Journal is doing it well, and The Daily is expecting to make a statement that news consumers will pay when the news comes to them in a convenient way.

We'll all be watching closely to see if this approach of a daily digital newspaper will be profitable. Not many others will have the cash to be as extravagant as Murdoch, but professional news organizations and student media operations will do whatever they can to copy this if it works.

The one thing Murdoch's product doesn't have is local news, and that's something all of us want. Is that his next step? ESPN has been successful with local Web sites in a handful of major markets, so it can be done at least in places like Chicago, New York and Dallas.

But for the rest of us in medium-sized to small to tiny markets, can small newspapers and Web sites produce something for mobile devices that people will pay for? Mobile devices are probably the only way a paper like the Springfield News-Sun or the Xenia Daily Gazette can ever move much past that 10 percent barrier in the digital world. Making big money on Web sites doesn't seem likely, because the Web at your computer is no more convenient than a newspaper. But mobile has convenience, and we are much more likely to pay when we can read, watch and listen to news any place at any time.

I watched Murdoch's announcement on Fox News today and the demonstration. It was one cool-looking app, that's for sure. And it sure would be fun to be part of the production team.

Every innovation has its naysayers and its optimists. Considering this is Murdoch and Apple, I'm leaning toward optimist.