Every 6 months or so, I consider subscribing to Apple News+. I lament that there isn’t a general RSS feature to add other publications not in the Apple News collection. Or that Apple doesn’t have an eInk offering for an “e-newspaper."
But this feature right here, surfacing local outlets and publications, would get me an instant subscriber if Apple were to aggressively seek out city-wide or county-wide papers. The current selection in the screenshot are our state-wide papers of record or “local” to our largest metro areas. I live in a relatively rural area, and our local paper website is terrible. Some intervention by Apple would be greatly appreciated.
I’d like to see them do similarly. At minimum, they should have every MSA in the US. They’re missing a few hundred.
My local news approach is RSS. Our paper of record, like many in small and mid-sized cities, has been destroyed by Gannett/Gatehouse and is paywalled tightly to extract revenue from remaining stalwart subscribers.
I can still get RSS from the TV stations’ sites and from a couple independent reporters and photographers doing their old job on independent blogs. The result is a variety that feels like what I’d want local in Apple News to do, just in a more linear layout.
Filtering national news and generic human interest stuff out of the TV stations’ feeds with keywords is a bit challenging and I wouldn’t mind some ML applied to the feeds. Maybe a DIY project…
I use RSS to consolidate the web feeds of my 3 big NPR stations. (Our PBS has a nightly newscast they podcast that also kicks some serious butt). That basically consolidates to the “state-wide” paper of record. My County/City coverage is lacking though. I’m considering just getting the actual newspaper of my County Paper. My bar for print media has historically been if the actual print product has a shelf value to it.
I became a donor to two of my affiliates and our statewide PBS. The local coverage really helped me feel connected to home when I lived out of state. I also have strong ties to other regions in my state beyond my home town so it feels relevant to me.
I also reached out to my NPR affiliate they told me that the best thing for their analytics is if you listen via their website or an App if they have one.
My local library card allows access free to Press Reader, which happens to include a facsimile edition of my local newspaper, as well as papers & magazines from all over to world. Have you checked to see if your local library has a similar offering?
They haven’t even expanded the countries they cover since launch. Most of the world don’t get News at all, let alone News+.
I remain convinced that “magazine style” content has an audience if it’s done right. Some years ago, I subscribed to Australian Aviation through their iPad app. It was a superb experience with focused, industry content. The content was longer form, but with monthly news as well and each section was delivered in the appropriate way. Articles were standalone articles and news items were in a scrolling list. They even had ads that were tastefully and smartly delivered in-app. Whoever developed the app had a real sense of how to make the best of the iPad. It wasn’t just web content and it wasn’t just print content (even though all the content was also in a print edition).
Perhaps not for day-to-day news, but I think a lot of deeper journalism could do well with this type of delivery.
Oh sure. The issue with a profitable magazine model digitally is that a ton of the magazines that are on Apple News+ are also free on the library apps. Though I often think that Traditional Newspapers print offerings should move to a monthly “magazine” and then focus on the web on the day to day.
A focus on local would be a good differentiator to the globalization of the social platforms. With the controlled environment normal in Apple Platforms, they would be in a prime position to uplift local publishers.
The NPR feed’s been a great addition to my reader. I just read a good interview about a local I wouldn’t otherwise have known and thought of 6his thread.
Tangential rant: algorithmic news is bad for your mental health. Humans are hardwired by evolution to focus more on negative news (so they can survive). Algorithms pick that up and start feeding you more negativity. Use an RSS reader or subscribe to a couple of news sources directly and avoid news sources in social and algorithmic feeds. You will sleep happier!. Rant over
