Orange County Register reinvents evening news cycle with curated iPad app

Poynter reporting:
While some newspapers are tiptoeing into iPad apps with replica editions of their print products, The Orange County Register has developed something quite different: a curated editorial product published late in the day.
The Register’s approach to the iPad is fundamentally different than many newspapers. Instead of asking themselves how to get all their newspaper content onto the iPad, they started from scratch to design a product tailored to the demographics and behaviors of tablet users.
In the process, the app is breaking conventions by publishing in the evening and limiting its scope to a handful of most-desired topics.

The OC Register for iPad app is a “curated experience,” said Doug Bennett, the president of the Freedom Interactive division of Freedom Communications, which owns the Register. It includes hand-picked stories “that we’ve identified as something they [iPad owners] would be interested in.”
The company decided early that its app should not be everything to everyone, and that a reformatted edition of the morning newspaper is not good enough.
“We’ve got plenty of time to do what some of our peers are doing with a replica edition” in order to reach existing newspaper readers, Bennett said. “What we’re after is that new audience that we haven’t necessarily reached in the past 10 or 15 years.”

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/mobile-media/134450/orange-county-register-reinvents-pm-news-cycle-with-curated-ipad-app