The Wall Street Journal.

This subscription is not cheap...but it’s well worth the money. The WSJ is THE American “paper of record”. No other interactive app or news source is even close. You will often see stories reported in the WSJ and then later, other news outlets “pick up” the same story. They are, in the truest sense, a “thought leader”. It’s also true the WSJ is a “paper within a paper” (meaning News v. Editorial Board...they did a story on that) but even the EB commentary is less bombastic and more measured. I don’t often agree with EB but I have noticed the apparent change and do read and appreciate the well-reasoned perspective. Realizing this change and relaying that observation has been a big surprise, as I am not politically aligned with the WSJ, and did not think such a change would occur. More importantly, I often begin the day reading the WSJ and appreciate discovering the many unique stories... Although your annual obligatory and sarcastic “ take” on Patrick’s day is wearing thin. Still, I find myself routinely quoting the WSJ as a source (as it is reliable) or saying, “I saw that story or I read about this story in the journal” and I am usually the “first to know”. So get this app and you will be impressed and informed and, usually, entertained...and let me be the first to wish Paul Gigot Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

The reading format and layout is still better than most of the other digital subscriptions I read, but the latest updates move it backwards in some ways. Pictures blink or reload several times when moving through the issue and it loses my place in the issue when returning to read more. The annoying ads issue seems much better, so thanks for that improvement. Update April 2018 - still the best news available, but it’s losing ground. Pricing has gotten very expensive, and the daily iPad editions load very slowly after the latest Apple software update. I have to open the app twice to see content. The first time just spins with no content for far too long; closing and reopening displays content on the second app open. I’ve deleted and downloaded the app several times to see if that helped, but it didn’t. Update April 2019 - I’m experiencing app crashes several times a week; the app just unexpectedly closes while reading an article on my iPad. Transitions from pages and sections are slow and jerky at times even with 100G WiFi download speed; it is smooth when I turn off WiFi and view the issue without all the background activity that must be going on when connected. Also, I learned that saved articles on show on the device on which saved - I can’t see saved articles on my iPhone that I saved on my iPad and vice-versa.

I'm a 77 year old lifetime newspaper reader and have online subscriptions to the Washington Post (print as well as online versions) and NY Times as well as the WSJ. I download all 3 every day and wander through them getting the flavor of the coverage and the opinions. I would prefer to be able to download the print version of the WSJ so I could see the placement of articles the way I can with the WP but the WSJ app comes reasonably close. The strength of the WSJ app is the ease of scrolling through to find and read articles in each of the various sections. When all articles are simply shown in long scrolling lines placed willy-nilly on the screen, it is harder to sort out the "news" from the "opinions." It's hard enough to read news articles filled with speculative words like "could" or "might" mixed in with what actually happened. The WSJ is making an admirable effort to keep its news coverage balanced and factual and its opinion section fair. I appreciate that in today's hyper-polarized media environment. BUT, the tech end is quirky. I don't like having an article disappear in the middle of my reading it. I don't like the fact that I then have to start over with the app to get back to where I was. SURELY YOU CAN FIX THAT!

The latest version of the WSJ app has many excellent features. I like very much the real time updating of current news. The insertion of video embedded within articles adds a lot of texture and detail. It is extremely useful to have links to supporting material highlighted in blue allowing a quick trip to scan the related article. I have only two complaints. First: many of the articles have animated memes or images that constantly alternate between one image and another producing pseudo-animation. This may be intended as an attention grabber, but it is also highly annoying and distracting. Seeing motion in ones peripheral vision tends to take the reader’s attention off the text and back to the animation. I have to resort to covering up the animation with one hand in order to continue reading. My other complaint concerns full-page advertising appearing in a several page article. The software resists swiping past the advertising to the next page of the article. I realize that this is done so people like me can’t simply breeze past ad copy that they don’t wish to look at. When I had only the print version of the Journal, I could easily ignore the advertising copy. With the online Journal I have to fight ad copy that refuses to yield to a page-turn gesture. I don’t like paying more than $400 a year and find myself forced to look at something in which I have no interest.

I enjoyed the print edition for many years. I find the WSJ readable and significantly less biased than than WAPO and the NYT. I no longer read the NYT, WAPO or Huffington Post. I watch a lot of FOX and find CNN and MSNBC to be unbelievably biased. My pet peeves with the digital version of the WSJ is the way it is organized. It does not read like a newspaper and I find it difficult to find stories by headlines and importance. I find the digital version of the NJ Star Ledger much more readable and organized. I don’t particularly like what the paper says but I can find what I want to read by looking a pages and headlines. I guess I’m old fashioned, but I just can’t warm up to the digital version of the WSJ. The other pet peeve is if I go from an aggregator like Drudge to a linked WSJ article I run into the WSJ paywall even though I’m a subscriber and must then go to the WSJ app, log in and attempt to find the article I was trying to read and I’m usually not able to find it. Can’t there be a way to allow subscribers to go directly to the article without all the rigamarole. I read newspapers using headlines arranged by importance not section by section!! Photograph your newsprint edition an use an app like the Star Ledger and I would be a lot more pleased with the WSJ digital edition. William E Musser