The Oklahoman News

I enjoy the Oklahoman News each morning and rely on it for most of my local and national news information. My only complaint is that the opinion pages and national news stories are too liberal and uniformly so. The editors and writers rarely present impartially both sides of important social and political issues and, thus, do not attempt to reflect the prevailing conservative views of the majority of Oklahomans. I fear this will lead to a continuing decline in readership, which will in turn force the publication to cease. A bit more evenhandedness would be much appreciated and would attract more subscribers.

Your recent changes to the digital paper is horrible. Before, I easily navigated getting the paper & reading it. Going from page to page was intuitive. Now, I have to jump through hoops & have to restart loading it a couple of times, then never know what I’m going to get. The simple way of enlarging the type is gone. In the middle of reading the paper, sometimes it jumps to a mega enlargement & I can’t figure out how to reduce it. So I have to scroll horizontally to read it. The whole thing is so buggy that I’m sitting here angry from the git go. The arrow to the next page sits so close to something in a right-hand column that I have to be extremely careful where I put my finger, or all is lost. I end up where I don’t want to be & start from scratch again. I don’t know where you got your programmers, but suggest you try someone with more than a third-grade education. I’m seriously contemplating just giving the paper up…canceling my subscription. Betty LaRue

I can appreciate that there is a lot to consider when building an app, but I really struggle to use this one effectively. For starters, customizing the UI for readability is extremely limited. I use the app on an iPad in landscape mode and the columns are not consistently sized. I would turn the iPad to portrait, but it would disconnect the keyboard. Getting the gist of articles in the smallest column on the right requires me to open each article just to know what it’s covering. There’s plenty of space for advertising, but there’s no discernible section for providing feedback on each article, which is really important to me. Allowing for public discourse is a great way to engage readers and increase readership. It also gives the editorial folks an idea of what subscribers are looking for. Cater to your audience and subscriptions will increase. Without the option for public discourse people will be less interested in what is being published, and subscriptions will continue to decrease. So, a complete overhaul of the UI is in order. If you can pull this off and make the app more accessible (customizable, intuitive, encouraging of feedback, AND equally useful to those with special needs), then you will have made a great app. What you’re offering misses the mark, but I’m looking forward to significant improvements.