USA TODAY: US & Breaking News 12+

Overall GREAT but one small request

Update Nov. 2024: I was contacted by USA Today about my review below a few months back and they fixed the issue with the sports league election defaulting to the NBA which I was super grateful for and impressed! Now that MLB is over and I want to switch to a current season league, it’s doing it again a I make the change and the next time I open the USA Today app, it’s back to MLB. Hoping they can fix this small glitch once and for all. 🤞🏻

Prior Review: I read USA Today on my phone at least 2x a day and have for years now. Easy to scroll through to identify subjects of interest, generally well written, factual reporting and reasonable succinct articles identifying where you can get more info - great for someone on the go that likes to stay current. I would really like it if the sports feature on the “Top Stories” page would allow a subscriber to make a sports league personal selection versus it defaulting to NBA - which is now over - and having to change it to MLB or NFL every time. Pretty please!!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for flagging this issue. We made a manual update so it no longer defaults to NBA, and are currently working on an update that will allow for a more personalized experience in the future.

Reporting is not what it used to be

I can remember seeing my first USA Today newspaper back in the early 80’s when I was a young guy in the Air Force. It was so innovative. We always had a copy in our break room. It was always nice seeing som info from my home state. USA Today has changed.
I’m at the point now that I’m thinking I need to part ways. For one, I’m really frustrated with the app. It plays video ads that I can’t stop. It pushes subscriber only articles which I don’t want to see since I’m not a subscriber. It nags me to subscribe. It repeats articles in the grid which wastes my time. The app lose my context and completely reloads when I switch to answer a text message and come back.
Secondly, the article editing is pretty bad. I see grammar and punctuation errors frequently. It looks like the writers do their own editing.
Thirdly, USA Today has lost its focus on news and has become more of an editorial dispenser. This is not a problem unique to USA Today in 2021. The news media in general has lost its ability to inform and has instead tried to become an influencer, bordering on just straight propaganda. Ironically, I have to work harder at getting to facts in 2021 than I did in 1982.
Sorry USA Today, you just aren’t excellent at anything these days. Why should you get my eyeballs?

I wish I could rate 4 or 5 stars

I have enjoyed reading the news on the USA Today app for years. Recently the experience changed when some content was blocked and available only to subscribers. I’m sympathetic to the challenges faced by the print media and decided to go with a digital subscription especially since I like USA Today so much. That’s where the frustration started. Once I paid for my subscription naturally I expected to no longer have access blocked as only being available to subscribers but sure enough that is exactly what happened no matter what I did. Even after signing in. Since it was the weekend I only had the chat option for customer support and their suggestion was to call customer support on Monday. So I called customer support on Monday and they told me the same thing - can’t find my account, despite me having a receipt from Apple proving I paid for my digital subscription 48 hours. Their suggestion? Call back in 24 hours! Not sure how that’s going to help. The lack of helpful customer service (precipitated by the lack of a seamless process in 2021 to recognize when a reader has converted to a paid subscriber) holds me back from being able to rate higher than average. Please help!