Short Takes: Flipboard Makes Media Inroads

Flipboard has a delicate balancing act to pull off. The Mike McCue-led company has a killer user interface for tablet-reading. The problem is it doesn’t have content. Rather than play a dangerous game like YouTube, Flipboard hopes to make nice with content owners from the get-go.

Today it signed up USA Today as its latest publishing partner. The Gannett newspaper will be available in Flipboard’s news section. While this is the first deal Flipboard has struck with a national newspaper, it has a series of partnerships with magazine publishers, including one to bring Oprah to Flipboard and an agreement with Conde Nast that will see The New Yorker, Wired and Bon Appetit come to its app. Flipboard brought in former Time Inc. editor Josh Quitner as its editorial director in June.

These agreements are key if Flipboard lives up to its promise. McCue told Digiday back in April the goal is to marry the beauty of magazines with the real-time nature and social connections of the Web.