I left my original review in early January. Now, it’s mid February, and things haven’t materially improved. It seems like they put attention into constructing a slick looking, webpage-like homepage, but the e-edition is still a mess. Inconsistent behavior when you tap an article; many articles not available in page reader format; page “index“ more limited than before, including not being organized by section; navigation buttons too close together, so it’s easy to hit the wrong one…. I want to support local journalism, but the frustration involved in reading the paper is starting to make me question why I subscribe. ——- Just want to lend my voice to those complaining about this new version in the hopes that the newspaper will remedy the situation promptly. I found the previous e-edition app a pleasure to use. This one much less so. The biggest issue for me is that many articles are not available in the easier-to-read page reader format. But also, glitches like unreliable close window buttons and sometimes the wrong article—could be another article from today’s paper or an article from a previous edition—being pulled up mar the reading experience. Overall the navigation feels clumsy, even though for the most part it works the same as the previous app. A very noticeable downgrade from the previous app and truly disappointing.
This app is very buggy. I have to restart it at least once every day when I read the paper because some crazy stuff is going on. Also please bring back the links for page numbers when articles are continued. That was so nice and made navigation easy in the old version. This one definitely needs work.
I would’ve given it five stars as I’m really enjoying the articles.. It gives me a summation of the daily news that I really want to hear from Madison.. I can go onto my app go through everything that is applicable to me and be done with it in 20 minutes and I like that a lot! Yes, they have those dopey as at the end but you don’t have to click on them you know lol I understand. I do try to contribute a little bit when I see something that is ad from Madison. I click on it because I found something I was looking for. Recently.. The hiccups and the bumps in the road really need to be worked out. And they seem to really be trying to do that so it’s part of a work in progress. When they first signed up for their recent offering… Everything went wrong.. however I did call customer service number and believe it or not. They actually solve the problem so many companies if you do that all they will do is listen and listen and listen but never do anything about it so I’m pleased so far and we got the app working right everything‘s working right now so I’m at the new stage of just trying it out and so far I’m actually pleased very much with the result
Today was the first day I utilized the new online state journal. What a setback! I utilize my iPad to read the daily paper as a sidenote. Where once you are able to click on an article, and it would be right there on the side to read in full without turning Pages. The new addition is somewhat similar, but not at a font that’s conducive to elderly people. In trying to expand an article you can’t get it centered, which is also annoying. A few other remarks is the fact that in this setting, I used to be able to have my time/clock on top of the newspaper and it would show me what time it was your new edition blocks that feature. As far as index, it does not include the obituaries /sports/ local news as a one click. Not exactly user-friendly! Looking at the sports television schedule is major work trying to get it to enlarge so you can see the whole thing. Also very annoying. We used to share articles with my family who lived in Madison at one time and while I can still do that it’s just not as easy one click to do it. I’m very disappointed in the new set up. Given the choice, I would take your old format every day of the week, which is when I read your paper! Please put me in the frustrated column.
Hard to believe, but after every app update to correct an issue something else comes up. After the latest update, the app now sometimes does not allow access to a page by tapping my iPad screen. When I tap I simply get a gray screen, no image. Tap the gray screen and then only the top half of the screen appears and I can’t scroll down to view the rest of the screen. The only way to fix this is to go back a page reload and then tap the arrow to forward and then reload What a mess! Calls to support are a waste of time: tried uninstalling then reinstalling, didn’t work. Tried logging out and then logging back in, didn’t work. The last time I called I was advised to use the Web site!! Come on, why even have an app if it doesn’t work and you need to use a browser for newspaper access??
This app is awful, but it’s all they have and they don’t seem to care. Editions don’t load, pages don’t load, it crashes constantly. All of this is covered in other reviews going back months and years, and yet all of these problems remain. Customer service apparently isn’t a priority for this paper or their holding company. I’m a big fan of local journalism, and although I have some issues with the content of the paper itself, I plan to continue subscribing and being a daily reader. I guess there’s enough other people out there like me, so they just don’t give a s@#+ to fix the many, many bugs this app suffers from. Note that I use an iPad and iPhone, so perhaps it’s more stable on a PC, but that’s no excuse for such continued poor performance. Come on guys, you can certainly do better than this.
Terrible app. Previous version worked much better.
I use this app to read the Wisconsin State Journal on my 7th Generation iPad. I don’t understand why the company replaced the previous version of the app with this version. This app is SLOW, BUGGY, and PAINFUL to use. The pages frequently freeze or don’t respond to your finger movements when using the zoom feature. The previous version worked well and using it was a positive user experience. Using this version is painful and frustrating and is a significant downgrade from the previous version. Whoever decided to implement this version of the app should be fired. It’s as if no one at the company stress tested this version of the app before deciding to implement it. Incompetence is broad and deep at the company that owns the paper. Please be brave, make the right decision and bring back the previous version of the app. Thank you.
Absolutely horrible. Doesn’t work when you click on the suggested sign in box. Can’t switch sections. Who thought of this ————show? It will not save my password so each time I want to check for updates I have to sign in. Of course that doesn’t always work. Some times it says my password is invalid. I can’t figure out what was wrong with the previous system. BTW, I called for help and after being on hold for 20 minutes I decided to leave a request for a call back. That was 28 hrs. ago and still haven’t heard from anyone. The ————-show continues on.
For the past three days the already iffy navigation has been much worse. The header updates when you try to go to the next page, but the page actually displayed doesn’t change. Using the page view thumbnails at the bottom to navigate is no better, often taking multiple tries to get to the desired page. Rebooting after quitting all apps does not help, and other newspaper apps (New York Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) have no such issues. After my wife and I discussed the terrible performance I checked, and there it was: the app was updated three days ago. Madison Newspapers consistently has the absolutely worst digital newspaper experience, and we only switched to it because their inept delivery of the physical paper was even worse.
I have been a subscriber for over 30 years. I get the paper version and use the online version for the extra comics and additional sections. While the online format is nice, the most annoying thing with this app is that it forgets, regularly, that I am a subscriber, and asks me to pay for a subscription! When I attempt to restore the subscription, it won’t let me. I have to delete the app and download it again and put in my login information. It would be nice if the State Journal would take some of the high monthly subscription payments we pay for this, and fix this problem and the many others that other reviewers have identified. I want to support local news but this makes it very difficult!
Whoever made the decision to go from the old app to this one should be fired. The old was easy to use and consistent with other Gannett news outlets e-editions. Without notice and no communication with readers, the old app stops working in December 2022 and readers (who pay for subscriptions) are forced to use this garbage. Glitchy, very poor user functionality, cumbersome...absolutely horrible. And there has been plenty of time to get this fixed. At a time when every business is improving the on line experience for readers, the Wisconsin State Journal made the decision to go back in time. Next they'll come up with the novel idea of printing the news on paper and delivering it to our door every morning...
The old app worked just fine. But all of a sudden the old app stopped working for me late December 2022 and I realized I needed to download this instead. However, this app doesn’t allow you to click an article to read the entire text separately from the page view. Any article you want to read you have to zoom in to read it and scroll to the next page where the rest of the article is. This is a huge step down for the daily reader. I have no idea what they were thinking, taking a decent app with good reviews and making it several times worse with this new app. Ugh!
If this isn’t fixed soon, I’m cancelling my subscription. The app is complete and utter garbage. It locks up. It’s slow. The interface is unintuitive. What a mess. It’s stunning to see the old app tossed in favor of something that is utterly useless. An incomprehensible change for the worse. Wow. UPDATE: We just bought a new iPad and the app works very well with a 10th generation iPad. I added two stars, but I am still rating it 3 stars as we shouldn’t be beholden to the latest tech to read our newspaper.
I can’t comprehend how someone thought this app is an improvement over the previous one. Newspapers are expensive to print and distribute and not good for the environment. The future of newspapers rests on their ability to move to digital. The app is a big FAIL! It freezes up and is slow when it does work. It is inconsistent in how it presents the articles you click on. The old app allowed you to jump to sections. With this app you need to call up “Pages” then select which page you want to go to. Frustrating at best and a giant, frustrating waste of time. Fix it or lose another subscriber.
I have a new iPad and this app is still slow when I pinch-zoom on articles. Some articles are missing the blue triangle to tap on to open on side view. App is frustrating and clunky to use. Now I tap on the app’s Download icon to download the full edition to pdf, and open it in a different app to read. Easier to read the papers as a flat pdf file and pinch-zoom on articles. During the Download process, I learned to keep my finger pressed on the View PDF button until another menu appeared, and I then tap Share and select my pdf reader app to open the file in.
Your previous WSJ E-edition worked perfectly. You then discontinued that app and made everyone migrate to this app at a higher subscription cost. The new app is horrible. Articles many times doesn’t open so they can be read. Navigation is clunky. The time at the top is blocked. What is wrong with your company? You run a newspaper and the whole point is to have people read your paper so you can receive subscription payments and advertiser revenue. By the way you also cancelled my WSJ E-edition subscription half way through without a refund or credit for the unused period.
This is not a well thought out version of the old app. Difficult to navigate. The old app had sections you could could click on, the new app got rid of that feature. I’m thinking that someone thought this new app was an improvement, maybe next time they should try out the product on existing readers to get feedback before launching such a poor product. I would have given this app a NO star for a rating if it existed. In my opinion subscribers will find news out elsewhere, this was a failure on many levels
So the app fails, and even after 7 days they haven’t contacted subscribers to explain, apologize, or compensate. I re-loaded the app as soon as it stopped working to no effect, so this new (and apparently buggy) one has just been added. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to spend two afternoons waiting for an operator to answer, and then to offer a flawed fix with no compensation for a wok of missed editions. Now all it does is kick me back to the login when I try to load the paper .Won’t be renewing for a company that thinks so little of its long-standing subscribers.
I really want to support my local newspaper but this makes it real hard. Screens are difficult to navigate and size on either phone or tablet. Pages do not fill screens on either device resulting in large white space boarders and very small print requiring resizing where top, bottom and sides of pages are lost. All this creates too much futzing to read the paper on what should be an easily accessible, customer friendly foremat. This one doesn’t cut it. Really disappointed. Go back to old app n drop this one.
I wish there was a way to turn off JUST notifications for sports news. The constant frequency of sports notifications is so annoying. I like getting updates for breaking news—international, national and local, but I don’t consider every single Badger or Packer Bit of Gossip worthy of having my phone ding me many times a day. But if I turn off notifications, I won’t hear of the important happenings near Madison or in Wisconsin. Dilemma.
Developers have solved the problem. For now…… Cannot access more than half the pages of the newspaper. When you try to advance from one page to the next page you get the same screen again and again and again. I am paying for a subscription for an app I cannot use. Using app version 9.12. On iPad Pro 4the generation IOS 17.4.1
Absolutely the worst app I’ve ever used for online news. It’s impossible to scroll the paper page by page, unless you are willing to re- load pages dozens of times. Each time you zoom to read an article the app is at high risk of locking out the scrolling function and only allowing zooming in and out. This is only fixed by exiting the page and trying again. It’s very annoying and slow to get through the paper this way.
Clearly, there is a consensus that this is the bottom of the barrel of newspaper apps. They did make one small improvement by making the silly blue triangles at the upper right for each story more transparent so they no longer block the text, but why they did not eliminate them entirely is beyond me. Problems that continue: - it has to be manually stopped on my iPad so that I can get access to the latest edition. - it logs me off 1 or 2 times each week. Not a good way to keep subscribers.
All I can say is this update is awful. The pages jump all over the screen, can’t believe this. I called customer service this morning, talked to someone from another country who said it would be fixed in an hour. Don’t know where she got her information. Have you ever heard the expression, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Received an email in the middle of the day on getting my morning paper. Check the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, they seem to have their act together. PRL
I hated the app I was having to use in January. I would have given it a half star at most. The one I’m using now is so much better and I appreciate the changes. I was happy with the oldest app though and don’t know why it had to be changed. I wish I could share articles with family without having to send the whole page.
I could not score less than one star, but would have. Stopped getting editions 12/28, not clear why. Without any notification old app no longer worked. Noticed popped up about new app when trying to self serve online. Deleted old app and downloaded new app and new app functionality is poor. Not just because it is change and new learning curve. Can’t navigate article to article page by page without having to do a bunch of extra steps.
About every other day you page selection software fails and you cannot select the pages you would like to read. Since it's been happening for the last year, it probably time to look at it and make improvements.
The ability to login and remove ads is huge and wonderful. For those who complain about video ads, get a digital subscription, and you won't have to deal with them. No ads at all!
I have gotten an error message for the past 4 years when I tried to hit share to email or anything else so I was having to take screenshots of articles to be able to read them later. Beyond frustrating. The latest update to their app seems to have solved the issue but it shouldnt have taken that long. It’s a rag with a very leftist slant - irritating even to independents such as myself
This app has some glitches but is otherwise a very good experience. I use the app to view the newspaper in its traditional for,at, which is way better than looking at the webpage view. Keep up the good work. On Wisconsin!
The WSJ had an alternate app that worked very well (the “e” edition), but apparently they stopped supporting it in favor of this one. This app doesn’t behave well and is very unpleasant to use. Page flips and zoom-ins are awkward and slow. You often end up zooming in on the wrong area and end up over-zooming when using simple pinch gestures. Bring support for the old “e” edition app back. I’m close to canceling my subscription if I have to fight with this app every day.
I’m a paying subscriber to the print version of the paper and like to check the digital one sometimes for convenience. I recently noticed that the app doesn’t show a search function, which seems like a serious omission for a news app. I did report it to their dev team and got a nice response, so it should be addressed.
I have tried to use this app for several weeks but it is not user friendly. It no longer allows you to click on an article to read through entirely. The sizing of print is wonky. It thinks you want to ‘clip’ every article. Since most of the articles are pulled off the web from other places and very few stories about local events, we are cancelling our subscription!
My main purpose of having the newspaper is the puzzles; specifically the crossword and word search (no longer available). I need to print these to solve them but new e-edition does not let me print them; I click on print and nothing happens. I also cannot figure out how to get new editions; latest one available is December 28.
I guess I’m done with the WI State Journal. The previous app worked fine, this on works not at all. We’re stuck with the nearly-as-buggy web version, now requiring a new login after two days use. Add to that Lee Publications’ latest effort to reduce content and limit access with the “Platinum” subscription level, and this reader questions whether it’s worth it at all.
Zero stars. I’ve been a subscriber almost 40 years. I also subscribe to the Milwaukee Journal and Naples Daily News. Until about a year ago, all three newspapers used a similar e-edition format. WSJ switched to a different format (vendor?), the result has been a certified mess. Their new format has been inconsistent in it’s story highlighter. Now the ‘Next page” arrows don’t work. Combine this with their failed “newsvue” for local high school sports. Just a terrible app.
I’m trying to think of a word more descriptive than HORRIBLE
Half of the articles do not expand in a separate window to allow for easier reading. Which articles? WTFKs. Slow loading, redundant article placement (articles appear more than once), some pages do not load and appear blank, some articles have blue borders than impede reading. Overall, a PP effort. The previous version was years ahead of this garbage
This app functions poorly. The recent “improvements” have made it worse. It does not work smoothly. Worse, one, or even more than one, edition, will not open at all, without uninstalling, and then reinstalling, the app. We find that it may work on one of our Apple devices but not on another. Please improve this app immediately. Your subscribers are not getting what they pay for.
The latest update seems to have added problems to the e-edition. I tried to report the problem but only got an answer to close, remove and reload the app. This is unacceptable. There needs to be a better way to report and fix problems. There is a reason the overall app rating is so low. As more subscribers let go of the paper, a more robust e-edition needs to exist and be supported.
What are we paying for? After the latest “upgrade” nothing works well. The pages won't advance with one swipe, the index at the bottom doesnt come up half the time, when it does and you click a page it goes back to the page you were on, cant print anything direct…. Whoever dreamed this up needs to be gone and get an IT professional.
Upgrades to the app are going in the wrong direction! Pages feature a big blue triangle in the upper right of each story/cartoon. This makes it hard to read the copy under the triangle. In the previous version the “Hide” option turned those triangles off but no more. Squinting at the screen to discern text behind the blue triangles does not build reader loyalty.
When I did not get the Wisconsin State Journal e-edition for four days, I made several calls during that time and after long waits was told the problem was being fixed. On the third call I was told to get the new app. It is horrible compared to the previous app. Hard to read. Clumsy to enlarge. Pages repeat. Games take up too many pages.
Latest app is difficult to navigate and read on IPad. Poor control of font size, paging and article selection. It’s confused between controls on touch screen and menu selections. Tables are presented incompletely and difficult to read across. Overall catches up slowly to commands. Needs serious attention for prime time. Please correct or go back to previous app.
Come on! Consistently bad experience using this app and it’s been like this for a long time - years! Who is in charge? Who is accountable? Price of e-version going up quickly with no improvements. If this wasn’t my only source for local news, I would drop immediately. In my workplace someone would lose their job(s) over this.
(I’ll update this as I presumably get access) After subscribing, the mobile website steered me hard to this (poorly rated) app. This far, even the mobile website after having subscribed has a surprising number of ads and links to parts of the paper that apparently my subscription doesn’t cover. Interesting experience so far. Not good.
The app is clunky. You can’t click on an article without the app loading a new stand alone page and often there is no copy to read, there is just the article photo. The newspaper addition is full of ads ( no problem) but there are now even more adds attached to all the views making the experience clunky. The old application was beautiful. This one stinks.
It must be up to the fourth time I’ve had to contact them on their terrible e-edition app. This time I click on the e-edition and page 1 is blank, I click again maybe page 2 comes up, I click again page 3 displays page 2 content and so on. I have subscriptions to a major & minor paper which generally are rock solid.
Too bad there isn’t a zero star option. The old app worked great. The new app doesn’t consistently open the story properly or might even be the wrong story. If changes aren’t made, I can’t continue to pay for such a poor experience. And the sad part is this is how people will want to consume content going forward, so really damaging their future.
I concur with all of these negative reviews. We received no warning about the change and now that I figured out what was going on, I’m very disappointed. I’m all for change, but this is a failure. I’m seriously considering dropping my subscription after decades of being a loyal reader. I hope WSJ goes back ( and let’s us know via communication).
They could have at least told us they were abandoning the old app which I discovered after a couple of frustrating weeks. After loading the new app I don’t like it. It is a step backwards missing several features I used. It is change without progress.
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