I’ve been procrastinating over diving into PressReader, a news app. I was given a free trial, but I didn’t quite get it the first time I took a quick look. My initial perception was that PressReader gives you access to over 2,000 newspapers and magazines from around the world, page by page, displayed exactly as the print edition looks.
It wasn’t until I had a real-world use for it that I gave it a more serious look. Now I’m hooked on it.
One morning not too long ago, the newspaper was late. My morning ritual includes reading my local daily newspaper, the Contra Costa Times. It’s just one source of news for me, but it’s one I still enjoy. Reading a newspaper at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of coffee is a still a relaxing experience.
Jonesing for a newspaper, I remembered PressReader. I had initially glimpsed at it on my Samsung Note 2. That morning, I installed it on my Nexus 7 and saw immediately that it’s meant for tablets, not smartphones. I looked at some of the U.S. newspapers and found, to my delight, the Los Angeles Times. I’m an L.A. native and lived there for 40 years. I miss the Times. I know all the complaints about it, but it’s on a whole different level than the dailies here in the Bay Area (though the San Jose Mercury News is pretty good).
The main screen, My Library, displays the most recent editions of your chosen publications. I downloaded that morning’s edition of the L.A. Times, which only took a few seconds. Once the free trial is over, that’ll cost me 99 cents per edition or $24.95 per month for all I can eat.
Tapping the thumbnail opens the paper to the first page, along with access to a couple menus. At the top of the page you can access tools that translate the contents into any of 14 languages. You can also listen to text-to-voice audio, which would be adequate for getting your news while you drive or shave or whatever. You can also use icons to turn pages (swiping the screen from right-to-left also works fine), and pull up a tumbnail view of the entire edition as well as a table of contents for the main sections and features like comics. (I’m jumping immediately to Calendar, the Times’ entertainment section, and Business. The Times dedicates an entire section to business. The Contra Costa Times gives it one page.)
Another option for navigating through the paper is at the bottom of the screen, along with Smart Flow.
Smart Flow is the more familiar approach to mobile news, more like Flipboard than a print newspaper. Each headline in the facsimle version of the paper is highlighted and links to the Smart Flow version, where you can control the font size, share it and rate it (thumbs up or down).
My enthusiasm for PressReader comes with a couple caveats. First, it’s for news junkies. It’s an successful compromise between print and digital, providing most of the benefits of both forms. To me, it’s another model that might fill a need in whatever the newspaper ecosystem is evolving to. I can see it for those who read a lot of magazines or newspapers, or who just miss their hometown paper and want to keep reading it. But if your mobile news needs are met by other models, PressReader probably isn’t for you.
There are some lamentable holes in the offerings. You won’t find The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal there. But that doesn’t mean it’s a collection of second-rate sources. The Washington Post is available, for example, as is USA Today.
The articles aren’t searchable, a feature that would be useful.
PressReader is from Newspaper Direct, which offers collections to libraries, retailers and other resellers of the content. Thousands of hotels use the service, for example, to provide access to news to guests, the first thing they see when they log in to the hotel’s Net service. PressReader is a companion app to the web-based Press Display; a couple other consumer tools are available, too.
I expect some may look at PressReader’s print-centric approach and wonder if that interface isn’t on its last legs. That may well be, but it’s not happening overnight. Even now, the digital audience represents less than 1% of the audience for all magazines. As long as the form factor is relevant, there are those who will appreciate how well PressReader translates the experience to the tablet. It has a shot at a place in the mix of models that will comprise the news marketplace.
So despite these problems, I’ll keep PressReader on my tablet and add it to the routine mix of news tools I use, including Flipboard, News Republic, Huffington Post, SmartBriefs, and a dozen or so other subscriptions and apps. Like I said, I’m a news junkie.
Thanks to Ray Wang, a PressReader Evangelist at NewspaperDirect, for the trial, and for his patience waiting for me to get around to giving PressReader the deep dive it deserves.