Murdoch offers ‘The Daily’ preview before Wed launch

Rupert Murdoch will unveil News Corp's highly anticipated iPad publication, "The Daily," in front of journalists Wednesday morning at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan.

But on Tuesday night, a select few guests will get a sneak peak about 23 blocks further south on Fifth Avenue. All Things D's Peter Kafka reports that Murdoch is hosting a "low key" cocktail party at his lavish apartment to preview the publication. Kafka, like other journalists, wasn't lucky enough to score an invite.

Kafka has heard some details, though, and describes The Daily as "a newspaper that's both old-fashioned and cutting edge." There will be some stories similar to other digital newspapers, he writes, while "others will look more like iPhone apps, featuring interactive graphics or videos, or photos you can swipe, pinch and zoom—with perhaps almost no text at all."

The Daily has been staffing up over the past few months and producing in-house issues of the iPad "newspaper" that will be available free for two weeks and then 99 cents-a-week after. (Poynter's Damon Kiesow put together a comprehensive list of staffers today who are behind project.)

Some questions will be answered tomorrow--such as what the publication will basically looks like. Others won't be answered for several weeks or months, such as how The Daily will go about influencing the news cycle while being mostly cut off from the Internet--or if iPad-users will pay for Murdoch's publication when so many news sources are available on the platform for free.

Newsonomics author Ken Doctor posed nine questions of his own on Monday as The Daily gears up for its debut.

(Photo of Murdoch and wife Wendy in Jan. 2007, in Beverly Hills, Calif.: AP /Gus Ruelas)