Leave a Review The Economist
These people are excellent at their jobs
I was compelled by a recent piece on the history of Russia’s attitudes towards Ukraine to post an enthusiastic, if disappointingly thinly answered, paean to the journalists of the Economist on my Facebook page. To be able to combine history, journalism and a spot of political philosophy in such a piece, in readable and lucid format, without dumbing down or preaching, and to do this sort of thing in five or six pieces week in, week out, takes more than impressive talent. It must demand application, which is belied by the impression of effortlessness it conveys. This, my friends, is real journalism. And I don’t always agree with what it is saying (although I must confess disproportionate alignment with content on an ongoing basis). Subscribing digitally, after years of enjoying the paper version and then enduring a long absence, was a very, very good idea. I flagellate myself for not reading more. The Economist deftly assuages some of these feelings.Show lessFiohubby
Terrible for audio/ need to fix auto-rotation
I like to listen to the weekly edition while exercising. This app takes far too long to download each edition and, when trying to play audio, it goes into a nearly endless “loading” loop that takes up to 15 minutes to figure out where it left off the preceding day before it starts playing again. I had to revert to the legacy app, which doesn’t have these problems and works smoothly.
And this new app doesn’t allow us to rotate the cartoon or other images so we can see them in larger landscape mode, as the old app does. That means I can’t read the tiny text in the cartoon (which is unaffected by font size selection) or some other graphics and still need to look at the old app to get everything I overpaid for.Show lessDc Yukon
Content is outstanding, delivery just meh.
Firstly, I’m an iOS user and get my content from the Economist primarily via audio. This content is fantastic - no complaints and gets five stars. But this is an app review and the app is frustrating for several reasons but I’ll just complain about the most frustrating here. You would think that after downloading the weekly edition that the response to article selection would be immediate but, no. It usually takes between 15 and 30 seconds to begin playing the supposedly “downloaded” content. This doesn’t make sense and is hugely frustrating when I’m driving and want to keep my attention on the road while being able to listen.
It really seems to me that the architecture of the app needs reworking with perhaps a well-designed audio player being integrated into the rest of the “content delivery system”.Show lessmsb64
The weekly format is a feature, not an anachronism
The Economist still stands alone as far as I know when it comes to content and writing talent but I do wish the app would go back to enabling a read through the weekly editions.
I have no doubt that driving users to the more frequently updated home page pushes up app opens and whatever other metrics some meddling product manager was trying to move but, it’s silly to make those of us that enjoy long form pieces and prefer to stay out of the 24 hour news cycle go through multiple clicks and a bunch of scrolling and head scratching to find where we left off in the article we were last reading. A “just show me the newspaper but on my phone” mode would be great.Show lessrgr856
Buggy isn’t better
The Economist is my favorite news source but the app is my least favorite app. The app repeatedly fails to update its content. Tech support’s instructions to reload and refresh provide relief for one or two days before the app crashes again and won’t update content. I’m happy to pay for some of the best journalistic content available, but the app is a failed delivery system and waste of money. If the app developers were on the same level as the content writers this would be a 5-star + news delivery service.Show lessBrunoXYZ
Great App, fantastic content and journalism.
I’m new to The Economist after a suggestion from a relative. My goal was to be more purposeful and engaged in the content that I consume and break the habit of endless scrolling of news headlines via Twitter, Google’s and Apple’s customized news outlets. I find myself actually wanting to read the content published by The Economist rather than skimming headlines. I enjoy learning about what’s going on around the world rather than being inundated by insignificant headlines that make many of the other news outlets’ front pages just to get clicks. It’s a completely different experience. For times when I can’t read the content, like while driving, or if I want to consume some of their longer form content but want to give my eyes a rest from screen fatigue, it’s nice they offer users the option to listen to the content as well. The daily Espresso emails are short bursts of content in the AM while I have my coffee and then throughout the day I can read further the content that I’m interested in. Thanks The Economist!
Suggestion for future app improvements:
(1) Give users the ability to double tap the “Home” button at the bottom to quickly jump to the top of the page.
(2) Give users the ability to better organize their Saved content. Either give them ways to create folders to organize their content, or the capability to apply “tags” to the content.Show lessSoccrosse43
Overall good, but not great
Overall good, but unfortunately has some bugs that keep it from being 5 star.
- app hangs whenever returning to an audio story when I left off part of the way through. I can’t go back to the beginning, I have to start playing another story first.
- not a bug, but I really wish I could choose the playback controls. With podcasts, I can rewind or fast forward ~15 seconds, which is particularly useful when I’m listening while I walk (I can tap my AirPods or use my watch). When I do that in the economist app, it goes to a different article entirely, which I don’t want.Show lessnathancastle
App has come a long way but some need for improvement remains
The app used to be atrocious. I mean, it basically worked, and it was better than nothing, but it was a really poor user experience. They’ve since cleaned it up, fixed some bugs causing it to crash, and recently introduced some new UI features.
But there are a couple things I would like to see. #1, if you see an economist ad on Facebook and click the link, it’ll not take you to the app. Instead you have to click the “open in browser” button. Even then it locks it behind a paywall when I have the app installed and I am logged in. Any other app (especially social media apps) give you a banner to “open in app”. I don’t want to log into the mobile site to access an article.
There’s also a bug I’ve been getting where I open an article and the text is all glitched out - there’s maybe a word or two on the page and then nothing below that.
One last thing, it’s mainly quality of life: Sometimes I’ll have already read an article, and then I get a push notification suggesting I read the article. Perhaps you could keep track of whether I’ve read an article before pushing out that notification?
One last thing, and again it’s quality of life: it would be nice to be able to manage my subscription in-app.
Most of these are smaller points, and the app has come a long way. Kudos to the developers.Show lessNois88
An awesome App with unrivaled journalism
I love reading and listening to the Economist. The app is easy to use and has steadily improved over the years. It is one of my top 5 apps. I listen or read it about 5 hours per week. At the heart over the great value is the best journalism. I have tried the WSJ, Barrons, and others; but now other source comes close to the level of Investment, Political, and Management analysis. I have been a subscriber for over 25 years and it has mad a large impact on my career and my portfolio. They cover the key topics in a conscience way that respects the highest levels of Journalism. I highly recommend it.Show lessDWillStag
Steadily sinking in quality
Apart from the horrible design and persistent audio playback issues that went on for months, now the article readers’ quality is going down. There’s no excuse for this especially considering the cost of subscription.
Readers used to be good but lately are more annoying than pleasant to listen to. This includes some new guy who can barely read and sounds like some taxi driver from East London with a heavy accent. I understand that this may well be because of “diversity and inclusion“ but what I say to that is that quality still matters. What the economist doesn’t understand is that I don’t want to listen to that kind of voice and that kind of reading because it’s very unpleasant. Canceling my subscription.Show lessKékcsillag
