• Variety, Friday, January 7, 2011 12:33 AM

As Rupert Murdoch prepares over the next several weeks to bow his new iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, for which he's hired a staff of nearly 100, News Corp.'s MySpace division could pink-slip as many as 500 workers shortly. The layoffs may be a precursor to a sale for the once wildly popular social networkingsite whose traffic continues to dwindle as Facebook explodes.

Murdoch's latest obsession is the potential of the iPad. Since last summer, he has been closely involved with creating a newspaper to be made available only on the iPad and eventually on other tablets. He lured a senior digital executive, Greg Clayman, away from MTV Networks to run the business side of the Daily, and tapped New York Post veteran Jesse Angelo to oversee editorial. The Daily, in which Murdoch is reportedly investing at least $30 million, is expected to debut before the end of January. The cost to subscribe will be 99¢ per week.

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