The Columbian

The new app is a significant improvement over the old one. So a lot of the complaints here are no longer accurate. My only remaining gripe is the share option still includes an entire paragraph instead of just the URL. Would also be nice if opening the URL in a browser would give you the option to open in the app.

For the last year the app continually freezes up after reading several articles. Back arrow quits working. Scrolling to the next article quits. All navigation does not respond. Forced to quit app and restart. That was annoying enough. Now with Apples last update to the OS I’m required to log into the app every time I use it. If I look at the paper several times a day I’m required to log in each time I go back to the app. Support was notified weeks ago, still no fix. I noticed this version of the app is over four months old. Obviously there is no maintenance done to the app on a regular basis. I have the same problem on my iPad, iPhone and my wife’s iPhone. The only way I can easily read the paper is to log into the website on my desktop computer.

I have been relying on the Columbian app for local news for years. The recent update with a revamped UI is OK but lacks any way to locate a past article: no History, no Search. But now when I go to read my “morning paper” I can’t; I get a dialog telling me that I have reached my limit on free articles. I’ve never seen this before, nor have I ever seen anything describing a limit. (Last week there was an annoying pop up every time I launched that said changes were coming that had a dead link to a “learn more” page; was this the change?) I might consider paying for the content depending on the rate, but there is no way to do this through the app. I can log in but I can’t create an account. Maybe I’ll try the Columbian website, if that is listed in the app.