The Tribune app is OK and I would probably rate it a 4 or 5. However, if you want to follow news regarding college sports, it’s a 1 or 2. This is true for any Chicago area college - Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, even Illinois. Click on Sports and you get all the pro teams. There is no option to find stories regarding sports. You can use the search feature and type in a specific school, and you will get stories related to that school, but they are not listed chronologically. The first couple of stories that pop up may be weeks old.I’ve communicated with the “contact us” option 2-3 time on this, and they tell me there is a “College Sports” option. I’ve sent them screen shots of what I see, and go no reply to that.

As a paid subscriber, I would expect a little less advertising. Even if that can’t be the case, the way that the app is laid out and the way that the ads load, you constantly lose your place since the ads and images load slow and then move things around on the page. One second you could be about to click the story you want to read, then an ad loads and you’re clicking on something completely different. Then you hit back to go back to the article selection and you start the whole process over.Searching for an article is also brutal (not a problem exclusive to the app - the website is just as bad). Even if I know what I’m looking for - say aldermanic endorsements, searching for that phrase doesn’t bring up anything related, or it brings up prior year and not the current year.Last, the lack of a digital edition of the paper where I can see exactly what the paper looks like if I received it in print is beyond frustrating. It’s difficult enough to find the stories of that day vs ones that have been posted for days, but not being able to see what the front page stories are for a given day as a paid subscriber just makes no sense.

Sorry, struggled to find the right end to start. As to Trib itself, clearly not what it used to be. More worries about hedge fund take-over, which might lead to my cancellation altogether assuming all original content then gone, given all the *retirements* of credible and knowledgeable local news, arts, and sports reports over the last several years. As to App, ironically, not sure all stories from print editions make it on, or at least in an intuitively findable way. More annoying is the fact that certain articles (for local stories!) appear to open directly to the web page, which then are almost always blocked by a pop-up ad offering me a subscription to the Trib. My previous complaints about this resulted only in the advice that I reload the App. Problem not solved. Befuddled to understand why this would continue to be an issue for local coverage, as opposed to, say, all the reprints from New York Times or Washington post. I also subscribe to those and am not relying on the Trib to rely those to me.

Why a 5-star rating? It is resting on its laurels. I’ve given it 5 as wishful thinking for the future. I depend upon the Trib in print and electronically and WTTW for Chicagoland news. Neighborhood news is ably covered by the Hyde Park Herald. For national news I subscribe electronically to The Washington Post and the New York Times. For television, I depend upon News Nation for balanced reporting. I am weary of the opinions and slanted combative coverage provided by MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. News Nation is a refreshing change presented by skillful journalists. For the Tribune I would very much enjoy having more in depth articles and more investigative reporting. Ours is a vibrant city. The newspaper should mirror that. I would like to see the Tribune benefit from setting their in-house expectations much higher and basking in the subsequent praise from the readership.