Mother Jones

Edit—Down to two stars. The app is not recognizing my purchase. I am unable to read Mother Jones. Unable to contact Magzter through the app—there is a forever spinning wheel. I don’t why it is so hard to make an app that can see what subscriptions the user has and allows them to see said purchased content. My subscription renews on 11/5, so that is not the issue. I am going to see if Mother Jones is still printed and dispense with this crappy app. Edit—Ok, I’m upping an initial 1 star to four stars. I am able to read articles from back issues in the “Articles” section. I am now assuming that I can forever read all the issues that occur during my subscription but only back issues whilst the subscription is current. Other than the set-up and my confusion over back issue access, the articles look good in the app. I should have also mentioned that Magzter did respond to my emails promptly. I’m hoping that after reading the magazine itself I can up the rating to 5 stars. I am writing a note to myself to update this review should I get everything working. My story—I purchased a one year subscription through the app store and downloaded the Mother Jones app. It didn’t recognize me and I ended up downloading the Magzter app. With some back and forth with Magzter help, I got the Mother Jones app to recognize me, but the Magzter app while recognizing me doesn’t acknowledge that I purchased Mother Jones. Finally, In the Mother Jones app I am able to open the latest issue! Alas, prior issues are shown with two buttons “Preview” and “$6.99”. I am interpreting that to mean that one does not get free access to back issues. When I look at the Mother Jones page in the App store, I do not see that prior issues are not provided free with subscription.

I do value the quality of writing but they should not sell a mobile version if they aren’t willing to take the time to actually make it mobile-friendly, as most others have done.

The revised Magster reader which hosts MJ seems to have resolved most of the viewing issues. I read the issue and articles now on my tiny iPhone 6SE and have No Problem. Clear and Normal reading. Like a lot of others here I had given up last year. Also, the separate download of Magster confused and angered me. It’s still not the more funded CondeNast publications but I can say All is well. I can read David Corn. I can read about people I don’t know. Works well and straightforward with my iPad too.