After months in the making, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has finally issued forth its paid-subscription based (albeit free for the first two weeks) online “newspaper,” christened The Daily. It’s only available via an iPad app, though I suspect versions for other platforms will roll out in time.

First complaint: I am a veteran of, and remain loyal to, the Daily of the University of Washington. To me, no other enterprise will ever deserve the name “The Daily.”

Second complaint: After all this planning by one of the world’s biggest media companies, the thing’s a flimsy mess.

It feels like an awkward mix of USA Today and the New York Daily News (archrival to Murdoch’s own New York Post). It’s full of stunning color wire-service photos, but its news stories are short and superficial; many are rehashes of stuff an online news geek would have already read.

Mitigating factors: It’s not as rabidly stupid as Murdoch’s Fixed Noise Channel, nor as puerile (or as fun) as his NY Post. The opinion section has a few intriguing, and eminently readable, guest essays. There’s no overt political agenda.

But overall, it’s an over-processed, over-formatted, over-packaged hunk of commercial middle-of-the-road blandness, being sent out into an online America that seems to not like that sort of thing.