Tallahassee Democrat

I’ve never used an app as atrocious as USA Today’s Tallahassee Democrat app. Initially, I was excited to learn I could use it to read past editions of the Democrat as well as USA Today’s papers from across the country. Now, I cannot access the papers from any state save Florida. Additionally, when using the app for the Democrat (as well as other Florida papers) the app gets “klunky.” I can tap to move from one story to another only to have the app not change to the new story. When I tap again, it will show an enlarged version of the new story and it takes another tap to reduce the size; often with the tap taking me back to the first story. Often, I can tap on a new story and it won’t even bring up the new story, or any other story on that page. Also, I’ve been using the app for several yers now and still haven’t been able to find how to increase/decrease the font size. It’s pretty clear a the folks at Gannett aren’t experts at app development, and as journalists I would not expect them to be. But I would expect those on the business side to have a better handle on choosing an app, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, either. Whoever the developer is that sold Gannett on this app clearly didn’t know what they were doing, either…

I like that this app gives me more ways to read the news and choose what’s important to me. I was thinking about ending my subscription this year but this is a easy way for me to access the entire newspaper and makes me want to stay subscribed. There was one moment where my reading was interrupted by an advert that forcibly closes the article to pop up. Adverts are necessary, but should be quietly hanging on the end of articles, not interrupting the user and blocking access. I would also prefer adverts for local businesses instead of random webcomics or other online ads. This app will also provide the advantages of online news with being up to date and knowing about breaking news as it happens, but still be able to access the full content of each issue instead of just select stories like in the newsletter.

I find the website and organization excellent. Unfortunately, the news reporting is highly biased and I’m not sure how long I can put up with the unprofessional nature of this type of journalism. Please present more balance views and report the facts not just Democrat talking points. Stop the brain washing and political manipulation. Realize that there are individuals in the world that like to think for themselves without fear of being cancelled and/ or censored. We also want the freedom to criticize points of view we don’t agree with. Stand up for liberty for a change. I’m sure I’ll be dismissed because I don’t agree with the TD political agenda, but frankly no one should be able to recognize such a bias and call it to the attention of a “real” news organization.