First image of Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper emerges

Ever since news started to leak about News Corporation’s upcoming iPad-only newspaper The Daily, it’s been one of the hottest talking points in publishing. Now the first image of the mysterious publication has emerged.

Damon Kiesow at Poynter did some digging around TheDaily.com and managed to find this image that hints at exactly how the new magazine will look. Judging from the image, it appears that the design is image-heavy, with a populist slant to the editorial. “Oprah’s Biggest Gamble”, shouts the first image.

Digging into the code further, Kiesow found the following interesting tidbits:

• The newspaper’s website appears to include plenty of social sharing features for Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and Newsvine. Could we see social sharing options baked into the iPad app itself, or is this merely a tactic to get people sharing The Daily website’s front page? One rumour is that The Daily’s website will include archive articles from past issues. The website could use this archive as an example of the up-to-date content subscribers will be able to read each day on their iPad.
• An embedded video player is present. Could The Daily be preparing regular video reports to complement its text-based reporting?
• It appears that part of the site will be password protected, but whether that will simply be for subscribers to pay and administer their accounts, or whether archive content will only be available to subscribers, is unclear.

So, lots of questions remain, but there’s less than a week left before Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs are rumoured to be taking to the stage together to launch the publication to the world on 19 January.