Des Moines Register

I am an employee here, so there’s your five stars. This, however, is not a five-star app. My biggest issue (aside from the only sections being news, sports and business — no education? Politics??) is that the app maintains no history. If I close out of a story I’m reading, I will need to go fishing for it later if I want to finish it (unless I saved it, but I’m not going to remember to do that if I need to attend to something quickly). And as I noted, stories are hard to find because of the app’s lacking organization. It’s maddening for the user experience.

I love having digital access to the local newspaper. I do not love the format of that access. I generally use the ‘Top Stories’ to try to peruse the latest news headlines. The section has grown larger and larger over time, but has not improved or given me more actual news. It must have some sort of random story poster and keeps the same stories up for weeks, NONE OF WHiCH ARE DATED. New stories mix with the old and the only way to know is click into each one and check. This is particularly bothersome with things like COVID statistic updates, which appeared daily for a long time. A story about 500 new cases might appear right alongside a story about 30 new cases and you’d never know if either was current. In addition, the same story will often appear many times in one scrolling, sometimes with a different headline. There seems to sometimes be a loose grouping of similar stories, but that is not consistent. The lead-in text is highly variable in both amount and quality. I would like to see an overhaul where there is a section for today’s news, with some divisions or sections for subject matter. Any stories from other dates than today need that date right there with the headline, and to be somewhere else entirely. Lead-in text should be consistent and concise and let me tell easily whether I want to read the rest of the story within a few words.

The app works ‘just fine’ to read articles. Two things I’m very much NOT in favor of: 1) If you want to read the comments you can’t do that here. Personally, I subscribe specifically because I want to read the comments from other readers. 2) You CAN read the comments using the web. But any time you’re reading an article on the web, and click on any link to return to the main paper, IT OPENS THE APP. If you want to read the article comments, you’ll then need to close the app, navigate back to your web browser, where you can read exactly ONE article, before the app opens again and you get to start the whole process over again. App is great for reading articles and navigating the on-line paper. Garbage if you actually want to read comments. Don’t understand why this is so - other Gannett apps actually DO let you read the comments on their papers. Should be a fairly easy update.