Keen On… The Daily Dot: Does The Internet Really Need A Daily Newspaper About Itself? [TCTV]

If New York has The Times and San Francisco The Chronicle, then the digital world has The Daily Dot – the first online newspaper exclusively dedicated to news about the Internet. Backed by the Los Angeles based investor Nova Spivack, the Daily Dot was founded in August 2011. As CEO Nick White told me, the “core job” of the Daily Dot is to “tell the story of the Internet.” And, so far, they seem to be doing a fairly credible job. Indeed, with $3 million “committed” in funding, over a million uniques a month, a staff of around 15 editors, White claims that the Daily Dot is covering news “relevant” to users. Perhaps. But, as White acknowledged to me, the free paper needs to get to three or four million monthly uniques by the end of its second year if it is to generate the advertising revenue necessary to become a viable business. So the bigger question remains: Does the Internet really need its own daily newspaper? Or is the Daily Dot just one more online journalistic start-up doomed to failure?