The Economist: World News

I never personally thought I’d be writing a review for a news app. I’m a 21 year old college student and generally skeptical of news organizations. After taking a class with a heavy usage of Economist articles, I see why my professor uses them in his lesson plans: they’re factual. After multiple months of contemplating whether or not to get a subscription, I finally pulled the trigger. The app is almost seamless, minus a few features I wish I could have in the app like a search option and a viewing history for easier access to show my friends the articles (I wish I could give you all a half star less for this, but I’ll go with 5 stars because I enjoy the content so much). I feel as though I can put my trust in The Economist because they deliver the news in a digestible and palatable way. I enjoy being able to audibly listen to articles and understanding what’s going on in the world. If you’re tired of traditional American news companies like NBC, Fox, CBS, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many others, then try out The Economist. The Economist offers a new level of detail, honesty, factuality, and trust that I appreciate when it comes to news reporting. I intend to resubscribe for more after my introductory subscription. The Economist (as far as I understand) does not do editorials or opinion pieces. They offer well thought out news reporting and a deeper understanding of current events.

I started reading The Economist 30 years ago. I have subscribed the entire time without interruption. It is the best conceived, written and edited newspaper in the English language. Most of those 30 years I carried the hard copy with me around the world, reading it cover to cover. With the app no need to even carry the hard copy. Though I must admit, with inserts removed and folded in half along long axis, it was quite convenient. Getting something new each day is a nice upgrade to the weekly version. In the hard copy days I would sometimes finish whole issue before next one arrived - Economist withdrawal. A nice, new, 15 minute taste every day paces me better

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I used to love listening to The Economist audio edition until a particular feature was removed. I used to be able to organise my audio playlist in a specific order; the world this week, then the business section, then finance, and afterwards a few select articles chosen among the remaining sections. I was able to go through the edition and organise everything once, then start and stop listening with the confidence that the playlist remained in the order I prioritised. Now whenever I add to the audio playlist it's always ordered in the way The Economist is (The World This Week, Leaders, Letters, etc) and I can arrange the playlist to my priority, which I used to do for the past few years....now I don't even want to bother with The Economist at all since I now have to either keep track of what I listened to manually and/or keep adding/removing to the playlist in order to listen while I'm doing other tasks. Very unfortunate. It would be VERY much appreciated if the feature to customise the order of the audio playlist is made available once again. Thank you.

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- I wish I could download all the images in advance for offline access, like I can for the text and the audio, and like I could with the classic app. At least the image streaming works better after the latest fixes. It is a huge data hog and increased my phone bill, so streaming over cellular isn’t a good option for me. - Audio needs a bit of love. Needs a 1.25x setting which would be the sweet spot for speed of playback. It frequently starts playing at the wrong speed. 15-second skip back should be the default back button for use in my car, rather than skip to the previous article. Narration sounds good. - It remembers where I was reading, but only one article... I can’t swipe to the next one in the weekly. - When re-finding my place, Clicking on the hamburger menu to find sections and then clicking on the section often doesn’t work. Other times the section headers are rendered offscreen, maybe after switching from landscape to portrait mode.

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I love The Economist, but their app suffers from a number of issues: 1. Even after logging in with a paid subscription, the app demands that you subscribe via a pop-up at the bottom and a permanent link at the top. 2. It logs you out frequently and doesn’t readily accept your information when you log back in. 3. There are minor glitches. 4. There is no search function for articles and so it is an ordeal to go back beyond the current issue to find things of interest, which is extremely annoying and contrary to other media app common practices. 5. When clicking on The Economist articles in social media, it has to jump through Safari and then the app, which takes a few seconds, and sometimes you get stuck in Safari where it pretends you are not a subscriber and... demands that you subscribe before showing you the article that you have paid good money for. 6. The overall layout of the app is not extremely well designed, which requires a lot of clicking to get around and allows one to easily miss even current articles (much less historical articles, which are extremely difficult to find). Too much graphics and repetitive links and links that aren’t relevant and not enough smooth/ seamless connections to other current or historical articles.