Newspapers are a dying breed as more and more content moves online. Today, however, News Corp. showed even online newspapers aren’t safe when it announced The Daily, its tablet-focused publication, will cease publication effective Dec. 15.

The Daily was launched in February 2011, and News Corp. as well as CEO Robert Murdoch invested $30 million into the publication, as well as dedicating 100 staffers to its operation. In total, its annual operating expenses were estimated to be about $26 million a year. Therefore, it needed a lot of subscribers, and it needed them quickly.

Although the online newspaper was first available only on the Apple iPad, it later expanded to the Amazon Kindle Fire and other tablets running on Google’s Android OS. A subscription cost 99 cents per week on the iPad and between $1.99 and $3.99 per month on other tablets.

“Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long term,” Murdoch said in a statement.

The Daily was hailed for its 360-degree photos, its table of contents complete with a variety of images and the option for readers to customize its contents to match their interests.

“From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation,” Murdoch said in a statement, adding The Daily will live on the “other channels.”

After The Daily’s final issue, some of its staff as well as its technology and other assists will be moved to News Corp.’s New York Post publication.

[Image via The Daily]