USA TODAY: US & Breaking News 12+

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?

Frustrating interface

Number one most frustrating issue: every time you set the phone down or switch apps and come back the story you were reading scrolls back to the top of the article. Super annoying and serves absolutely no purpose. Can’t imagine this would be hard to correct, so please make this stop. I beg you.

Second, and this is a compound issue: the main news feed refreshes too often. In the past, the top stories section was just that. Just the most newsworthy stories of the moment. Now, you have packed seemingly every story on the platform all into the top stories section. Well, I could live with that except as I work my way through the never ending list of articles, the app refreshes the feed every so often making me lose my place. To add to the nuisance, all the stories are now in a different order so I can’t really ever get back to where I was.

Please pick one or the other: 1) go back to the perfectly logical way you had it before where the top stories were indeed the top stories and I will go into the individual sections for more depth on what I want more of, or 2) turn off the occasional refresh and let me do that whenever I feel the need. It’s fine if it refreshes when you open the app, just not during an active session.

Itunes subscription doesn’t work

Update May 22– why in the world can’t they fix the bugs in this app? We are paying for premium ad-free, yet frequently I,m blocked from reading a story because “the content is for subscribers”. I then check my account- yes the subscription is acknowledged— so why is the display not working correctly?

I’ve been using this app for years and generally satisfied. Less satisfied this year with stale content that lingers for days, weeks, month. Then came the implementation of paid subscriptions. I don’t have a problem with that decision— gotta pay the bills and the newspaper business in general is suffering as the public migrates away from wanting to read newspapers. (Very sad) I did sign up for a premium subscription earlier this summer when it was introduced - despite the annoying video ads smack in the middle of articled. Now my subscription doesn’t work thru itunes —Apple shows it as still being valid on monthly renewal, but even though I go to settings and click on restore purchase, the app will not acknowledge it and I have no premium content. Folks, this is incompetence. Get it together! I’m not going to pay you to not function.

Developer Response ,

If you purchased a subscription through an app store you will need to link your app purchase in order to have full access to our desktop and mobile website, in addition to our app. If you do not link your subscription you will not be able to access unlimited stories, subscriber-only content, and the e-Edition on our desktop and mobile website and e-Edition app. Once you have created your account, please use these credentials to sign in on our desktop or mobile website for full access to your subscriber benefits. To link your subscription, please follow the directions below: iOS Open our app that you purchased a subscription for, Click on the settings (gear) icon in the top right corner of the screen, Click "Create Account" and follow the instructions to make a profile. Once you have created your account, please use these credentials to sign in on our desktop or mobile website for full access to your subscriber benefits. If that does not resolve your issue, can you help us by sharing any additional details (what you were doing while seeing the issue) as well as a screenshot where possible so that we can better investigate this issue? Please email us at USATODAYmobile@USATODAY.com with those details and we will do our best to resolve. You can also call 1-800-872-0001 if you need help right away. Thank you.