Toronto Star's digital gamble

People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath. — Marshall McLuhan
If Marshall McLuhan had been able to spend any time with the new Star Touch iPad application, he might have changed that aphorism to: “People don’t actually read iPad news applications from the Toronto Star, they bounce around inside them like a caffeinated tourist in Time Square.”
If you’re not familiar with the product, Star Touch is TorStar’s big gamble on a digital future. It is a free, iPad-only app that totally repackages Toronto Star content for an Apple tablet audience. The newspaper publisher purchased the technology and launch expertise of La Presse, which launched the app platform as La Presse+ in April 2013. La Presse spent about $40 million developing the interactive news platform. TorStar is its first customer for the platform as it moved, this year, into being not just a news provider on the software, but a vendor of it to other publishers. Star Touch launched its version on September 15, at a cost of at least $10 million.
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