News Corp. dipping into New York Times talent pool for The Daily

Joe Pompeo
·Media Reporter

Is The Daily the next front in the great New York Times-Rupert Murdoch rivalry?

Asked about the News Corp. chairman's forthcoming iPad news publication at a Reuters media summit earlier this week, Times CEO Janet Robinson snarkily replied: "We have a superior daily. We call it the New York Times."

And today, Daily Intel's Chris Rovzar writes:

The Gray Lady is Murdoch's longtime bête noir, and just as he targeted it with his 'Greater New York' section in The Wall Street Journal, he's apparently trying to wound it with The Daily as well: We hear brass at the tablet newspaper have been trying to poach a few key staffers from the Times and have succeeded in stealing Gabriel Dance, nytimes.com's valuable chief multimedia producer.

Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha confirmed for The Cutline that Dance has indeed "accepted another job and will be leaving the Times." Though she would not comment on whether he or other any other Times staffers had defected to join the growing roster of editorial talent News Corp. has been lining up for the venture.

Over at the Village Voice, Foster Kamer has the latest list of freshly poached Daily employees, including Jebediah Reed, who just two months ago was recruited by his former Radar magazine colleague Dale Hrabi to be an online editor at The Week.

One person who apparently has not been reading the myriad headlines media reporters have been churning out about The Daily is News Corp digital chief Jon Miller. At Business Insider's Ignition conference today, Miller attempted to paint The Daily as just "a rumor."

But if there was a Daily, he said, "it wouldn't [launch] this month. Q1 is the time frame people should think about." Which is precisely what we reported about two weeks ago.