Well, the grand experiment of the first iPad only newspaper is soon coming to an end. The Daily, published by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, will be publishing a final farewell issue on December 15 – around two months shy of two years from its launch in the iPad App Store.

The Daily has over 100,000 subscribers but appears to have fallen a long way short of its owners’ financial targets – and probably far short of breaking even. Little surprise there though with the early reports that $30 million was spent on it before it even hit the App Store and of a staff of over 100 for the title.

Here’s a few excerpt chunks from the press release from The Daily:

Two years ago, we set out to create a revolutionary product that people would love.  The Daily delivered great original reporting, excellent design, and custom interactivity to users every day.  Although we have over 100,000 passionate paying subscribers, unfortunately we have not been able to build a big enough audience fast enough to make our business model work. …

Our iPad app will cease publishing on Dec. 15 with a farewell issue.  The Daily has a strong social media presence and a large, engaged community of fans and we intend to continue to engage our social following with our unique take on the news. 

The Daily innovated every day. We broke some great stories. We made a publication that a lot of people love. We should be proud of what we achieved.

I was fascinated with the idea of The Daily the first time I heard about it – but found it disappointing right from the off.

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The Daily, the first iPad-only newspaper, has announced that it is making major staff cuts and stripping away features. The announcement comes not long after reports that the title is in danger of being shutdown – and the cuts being made are certainly significant ones.

As AllThingsD reports, 50 full-time employees of The Daily are being released – that’s nearly 30% of the full-time staff. Two other big cutbacks are these:

– There will be no more separate Opinion section – occasional opinion pieces and editorials will be included within the News section (and clearly identified) and the Sports section is being partly outsourced: “Sports reporting will now be provided by content partners, like Fox Sports, while existing features like photo galleries and the ability to track favorite teams via a customizable sports page will remain.”

– The Daily now supports only portrait mode, though videos can still be viewed in landscape.

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