Wisconsin State Journal Reviews

I can’t comprehend how someone thought WisconsinStateJournal is an improvement over the previous one. Newspapers are expensive to print and distribute and not good for the environment. The future of newspapers rests on their ability to move to digital. WisconsinStateJournal is a big FAIL! It freezes up and is slow when it does work. It is inconsistent in how it presents the articles you click on. The old app allowed you to jump to sections. With WisconsinStateJournal you need to call up “Pages” then select which page you want to go to. Frustrating at best and a giant, frustrating waste of time. Fix it or lose another subscriber.

So WisconsinStateJournal fails, and even after 7 days they haven’t contacted subscribers to explain, apologize, or compensate. I re-loaded WisconsinStateJournal as soon as it stopped working to no effect, so this new (and apparently buggy) one has just been added. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to spend two afternoons waiting for an operator to answer, and then to offer a flawed fix with no compensation for a wok of missed editions. Now all it does is kick me back to the login when I try to load the paper .Won’t be renewing for a company that thinks so little of its long-standing subscribers.

The old app worked just fine. But all of a sudden the old app stopped working for me late December 2022 and I realized I needed to download this instead. However, WisconsinStateJournal doesn’t allow you to click an article to read the entire text separately from the page view. Any article you want to read you have to zoom in to read it and scroll to the next page where the rest of the article is. This is a huge step down for the daily reader. I have no idea what they were thinking, taking a decent app with good reviews and making it several times worse with this new app. Ugh!

Today was the first day I utilized the new online state journal. What a setback!
I utilize my iPad to read the daily paper as a sidenote.

Where once you are able to click on an article, and it would be right there on the side to read in full without turning Pages. The new addition is somewhat similar, but not at a font that’s conducive to elderly people.

In trying to expand an article you can’t get it centered, which is also annoying.

A few other remarks is the fact that in this setting, I used to be able to have my time/clock on top of the newspaper and it would show me what time it was your new edition blocks that feature.

As far as index, it does not include the obituaries /sports/ local news as a one click. Not exactly user-friendly!

Looking at the sports television schedule is major work trying to get it to enlarge so you can see the whole thing. Also very annoying.

We used to share articles with my family who lived in Madison at one time and while I can still do that it’s just not as easy one click to do it.

I’m very disappointed in the new set up. Given the choice, I would take your old format every day of the week, which is when I read your paper!

Please put me in the frustrated column.

Absolutely horrible. Doesn’t work when you click on the suggested sign in box. Can’t switch sections. Who thought of this ————show? It will not save my password so each time I want to check for updates I have to sign in. Of course that doesn’t always work. Some times it says my password is invalid. I can’t figure out what was wrong with the previous system. BTW, I called for help and after being on hold for 20 minutes I decided to leave a request for a call back. That was 28 hrs. ago and still haven’t heard from anyone. The ————-show continues on.

I have a new iPad and WisconsinStateJournal is still slow when I pinch-zoom on articles. Some articles are missing the blue triangle to tap on to open on side view. App is frustrating and clunky to use. Now I tap on WisconsinStateJournal ’s Download icon to download the full edition to pdf, and open it in a different app to read. Easier to read the papers as a flat pdf file and pinch-zoom on articles.

During the Download process, I learned to keep my finger pressed on the View PDF button until another menu appeared, and I then tap Share and select my pdf reader app to open the file in.

Your previous WSJ E-edition worked perfectly. You then discontinued that app and made everyone migrate to WisconsinStateJournal at a higher subscription cost. The new app is horrible. Articles many times doesn’t open so they can be read. Navigation is clunky. The time at the top is blocked. What is wrong with your company? You run a newspaper and the whole point is to have people read your paper so you can receive subscription payments and advertiser revenue. By the way you also cancelled my WSJ E-edition subscription half way through without a refund or credit for the unused period.

This is not a well thought out version of the old app. Difficult to navigate. The old app had sections you could could click on, the new app got rid of that feature. I’m thinking that someone thought this new app was an improvement, maybe next time they should try out the product on existing readers to get feedback before launching such a poor product. I would have given WisconsinStateJournal a NO star for a rating if it existed. In my opinion subscribers will find news out elsewhere, this was a failure on many levels

I really want to support my local newspaper but this makes it real hard. Screens are difficult to navigate and size on either phone or tablet. Pages do not fill screens on either device resulting in large white space boarders and very small print requiring resizing where top, bottom and sides of pages are lost. All this creates too much futzing to read the paper on what should be an easily accessible, customer friendly foremat. This one doesn’t cut it. Really disappointed. Go back to old app n drop this one.

For the past three days the already iffy navigation has been much worse. The header updates when you try to go to the next page, but the page actually displayed doesn’t change. Using the page view thumbnails at the bottom to navigate is no better, often taking multiple tries to get to the desired page. Rebooting after quitting all apps does not help, and other newspaper apps (New York Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) have no such issues. After my wife and I discussed the terrible performance I checked, and there it was: WisconsinStateJournal was updated three days ago. Madison Newspapers consistently has the absolutely worst digital newspaper experience, and we only switched to it because their inept delivery of the physical paper was even worse.

Absolutely the worst app I’ve ever used for online news. It’s impossible to scroll the paper page by page, unless you are willing to re- load pages dozens of times. Each time you zoom to read an article WisconsinStateJournal is at high risk of locking out the scrolling function and only allowing zooming in and out. This is only fixed by exiting the page and trying again. It’s very annoying and slow to get through the paper this way.

Clearly, there is a consensus that this is the bottom of the barrel of newspaper apps. They did make one small improvement by making the silly blue triangles at the upper right for each story more transparent so they no longer block the text, but why they did not eliminate them entirely is beyond me. Problems that continue:
- it has to be manually stopped on my iPad so that I can get access to the latest edition.
- it logs me off 1 or 2 times each week. Not a good way to keep subscribers.

All I can say is this update is awful. The pages jump all over the screen, can’t believe this. I called customer service this morning, talked to someone from another country who said it would be fixed in an hour. Don’t know where she got her information. Have you ever heard the expression, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Received an email in the middle of the day on getting my morning paper. Check the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, they seem to have their act together.

PRL

I could not score less than one star, but would have. Stopped getting editions 12/28, not clear why. Without any notification old app no longer worked. Noticed popped up about new app when trying to self serve online. Deleted old app and downloaded new app and new app functionality is poor. Not just because it is change and new learning curve. Can’t navigate article to article page by page without having to do a bunch of extra steps.

The WSJ had an alternate app that worked very well (the “e” edition), but apparently they stopped supporting it in favor of this one.

WisconsinStateJournal doesn’t behave well and is very unpleasant to use. Page flips and zoom-ins are awkward and slow. You often end up zooming in on the wrong area and end up over-zooming when using simple pinch gestures. Bring support for the old “e” edition app back. I’m close to canceling my subscription if I have to fight with WisconsinStateJournal every day.

Whoever made the decision to go from the old app to this one should be fired. The old was easy to use and consistent with other Gannett news outlets e-editions. Without notice and no communication with readers, the old app stops working in December 2022 and readers (who pay for subscriptions) are forced to use this garbage. Glitchy, very poor user functionality, cumbersome...absolutely horrible. And there has been plenty of time to get this fixed. At a time when every business is improving the on line experience for readers, the Wisconsin State Journal made the decision to go back in time. Next they'll come up with the novel idea of printing the news on paper and delivering it to our door every morning...

I use WisconsinStateJournal to read the Wisconsin State Journal on my 7th Generation iPad. I don’t understand why the company replaced the previous version of WisconsinStateJournal with this version. WisconsinStateJournal is SLOW, BUGGY, and PAINFUL to use. The pages frequently freeze or don’t respond to your finger movements when using the zoom feature. The previous version worked well and using it was a positive user experience. Using this version is painful and frustrating and is a significant downgrade from the previous version. Whoever decided to implement this version of WisconsinStateJournal should be fired. It’s as if no one at the company stress tested this version of WisconsinStateJournal before deciding to implement it. Incompetence is broad and deep at the company that owns the paper. Please be brave, make the right decision and bring back the previous version of WisconsinStateJournal . Thank you.

They listened to complaints about the social media aspect but more and more ads are videos with sound that can't be closed until done. Just a bad app.

I seriously can’t even use WisconsinStateJournal . I don’t know if the scrolling is messed up because of the billion spammy ads they serve or if it’s just a terrible design.

The latest app update is terrible. The small white text on the pictures is pretty much unreadable. I’ve enjoyed using WisconsinStateJournal for many years but this update makes it pretty much unusable.

I have gotten an error message for the past 4 years when I tried to hit share to email or anything else so I was having to take screenshots of articles to be able to read them later. Beyond frustrating. The latest update to their app seems to have solved the issue but it shouldnt have taken that long. It’s a rag with a very leftist slant - irritating even to independents such as myself

WisconsinStateJournal is awful, but it’s all they have and they don’t seem to care. Editions don’t load, pages don’t load, it crashes constantly. All of this is covered in other reviews going back months and years, and yet all of these problems remain. Customer service apparently isn’t a priority for this paper or their holding company. I’m a big fan of local journalism, and although I have some issues with the content of the paper itself, I plan to continue subscribing and being a daily reader. I guess there’s enough other people out there like me, so they just don’t give a s@#+ to fix the many, many bugs WisconsinStateJournal suffers from. Note that I use an iPad and iPhone, so perhaps it’s more stable on a PC, but that’s no excuse for such continued poor performance. Come on guys, you can certainly do better than this.

Hard to believe, but after every app update to correct an issue something else comes up. After the latest update, WisconsinStateJournal now sometimes does not allow access to a page by tapping my iPad screen. When I tap I simply get a gray screen, no image. Tap the gray screen and then only the top half of the screen appears and I can’t scroll down to view the rest of the screen. The only way to fix this is to go back a page reload and then tap the arrow to forward and then reload What a mess! Calls to support are a waste of time: tried uninstalling then reinstalling, didn’t work. Tried logging out and then logging back in, didn’t work. The last time I called I was advised to use the Web site!! Come on, why even have an app if it doesn’t work and you need to use a browser for newspaper access??

I fully appreciate the fact that the trade off for a free app is the use of ads to help pay for it. I even look at some of them when they look interesting. Auto playing videos that override my ‘mute’ switch is both annoying and unnecessary.

For the last few weeks I get notifications but cannot view the articles. I have deleted WisconsinStateJournal and reinstalled multiple times with no success in fixing it. Please fix WisconsinStateJournal . In the meantime switching to another local news source.

I paid for the promotion and can not get into my account-tried many times. To solve it you get sent to an off site source that is difficult to understand. Very Very Frustrated with the whole system. Leo Bartlett

No matter what I do, WisconsinStateJournal gives me a “no content available” error for every story.

Waste of time!

I’m a paid subscriber to this news service and it won’t even let me log in because of the same error.

...would be a more pleasant sound than the screeching, blasting high volume video advertising that hits you when you open WisconsinStateJournal. and you can't avoid it, can't turn it off. do NOT download WisconsinStateJournal unless you love noise and ads.

App repeatedly opens a video on its own regardless of the article being read, which locks up WisconsinStateJournal . Too frustrating to even bother reading what you want to read.

In the previous months, WisconsinStateJournal worked great. Now I constantly get “ Your request could not be processed at this time” error message. This needs to be fixed and app updated.

Not a fan. WisconsinStateJournal forces you into portrait mode, which is awkward on the iPad. It’s impossible to read the news using the stand. Fix that, and then let’s talk about the non-vetted news feed. Basically unusable.

Just started crashing. Screen goes black after attempting to open article. Deleted and reinstalled with same results. Running OS 15.0.2

What happened with the last update a few days ago? Cannot view anything now. App is useless until it gets fixed.

I’m getting tired of calling them to reset my account or whatever they do so I can access the e-edition. The latest frustration, WisconsinStateJournal does not open when accessed through WisconsinStateJournal or through the daily email. All I get is a blue screen with Wisconsin State Journal and a never stopping spinning wheel. I subscribe to the eedition to get WI state legislature news, to review opinions I don’t share, but mainly for the comics which have now become so fuzzy that the captions are unreadable, especially Doonesbury. I’m getting close to canceling my subscription.

WisconsinStateJournal is very buggy. I have to restart it at least once every day when I read the paper because some crazy stuff is going on. Also please bring back the links for page numbers when articles are continued. That was so nice and made navigation easy in the old version. This one definitely needs work.

Not a very well-crafted app, and the user experience has gradually become more user-hostile. I'd say look elsewhere, but it seems all our local media are incapable of making a decent app.

It says a lot about how much you value your readers when the only notes on the last update were 'Updates analytics'. Here's an update for your analytics: I've had enough of interstitial ads, ads that screw up scrolling the story list, and frequent crashes, and my usage is now zero.

Good luck, I guess?

Recently my app goes to a black screen & the only way out is to close WisconsinStateJournal and start over. Anyone else notice this? I’ve uninstalled & reinstalled and it’s the same. Any suggestions for better app to use?

I left my original review in early January. Now, it’s mid February, and things haven’t materially improved. It seems like they put attention into constructing a slick looking, webpage-like homepage, but the e-edition is still a mess. Inconsistent behavior when you tap an article; many articles not available in page reader format; page “index“ more limited than before, including not being organized by section; navigation buttons too close together, so it’s easy to hit the wrong one…. I want to support local journalism, but the frustration involved in reading the paper is starting to make me question why I subscribe.
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Just want to lend my voice to those complaining about this new version in the hopes that the newspaper will remedy the situation promptly. I found the previous e-edition app a pleasure to use. This one much less so. The biggest issue for me is that many articles are not available in the easier-to-read page reader format. But also, glitches like unreliable close window buttons and sometimes the wrong article—could be another article from today’s paper or an article from a previous edition—being pulled up mar the reading experience. Overall the navigation feels clumsy, even though for the most part it works the same as the previous app. A very noticeable downgrade from the previous app and truly disappointing.

Developers have solved the problem.

For now……

Cannot access more than half the pages of the newspaper. When you try to advance from one page to the next page you get the same screen again and again and again. I am paying for a subscription for an app I cannot use. Using app version 9.12. On iPad Pro 4the generation IOS 17.4.1

I wish there was a way to turn off JUST notifications for sports news. The constant frequency of sports notifications is so annoying. I like getting updates for breaking news—international, national and local, but I don’t consider every single Badger or Packer Bit of Gossip worthy of having my phone ding me many times a day. But if I turn off notifications, I won’t hear of the important happenings near Madison or in Wisconsin. Dilemma.

I hated WisconsinStateJournal I was having to use in January. I would have given it a half star at most. The one I’m using now is so much better and I appreciate the changes. I was happy with the oldest app though and don’t know why it had to be changed. I wish I could share articles with family without having to send the whole page.

If this isn’t fixed soon, I’m cancelling my subscription. WisconsinStateJournal is complete and utter garbage. It locks up. It’s slow. The interface is unintuitive. What a mess. It’s stunning to see the old app tossed in favor of something that is utterly useless. An incomprehensible change for the worse. Wow. UPDATE: We just bought a new iPad and WisconsinStateJournal works very well with a 10th generation iPad. I added two stars, but I am still rating it 3 stars as we shouldn’t be beholden to the latest tech to read our newspaper.

I’m a paying subscriber to the print version of the paper and like to check the digital one sometimes for convenience. I recently noticed that WisconsinStateJournal doesn’t show a search function, which seems like a serious omission for a news app. I did report it to their dev team and got a nice response, so it should be addressed.

I would’ve given it five stars as I’m really enjoying the articles.. It gives me a summation of the daily news that I really want to hear from Madison.. I can go onto my app go through everything that is applicable to me and be done with it in 20 minutes and I like that a lot!

Yes, they have those dopey as at the end but you don’t have to click on them you know lol I understand. I do try to contribute a little bit when I see something that is ad from Madison. I click on it because I found something I was looking for. Recently..

The hiccups and the bumps in the road really need to be worked out. And they seem to really be trying to do that so it’s part of a work in progress.

When they first signed up for their recent offering… Everything went wrong.. however I did call customer service number and believe it or not. They actually solve the problem so many companies if you do that all they will do is listen and listen and listen but never do anything about it so I’m pleased so far and we got WisconsinStateJournal working right everything‘s working right now so I’m at the new stage of just trying it out and so far I’m actually pleased very much with the result

I’m still having issues with page changes. I will swipe or arrow to change to the next page and it thinks and doesn’t move on. Then I arrow to next page and it skips a page. I’ve deleted and reloaded WisconsinStateJournal two different times and it’s still happening.

The ability to login and remove ads is huge and wonderful. For those who complain about video ads, get a digital subscription, and you won't have to deal with them. No ads at all!

All the people complaining are using the free version. Pay $5 a month which also supports good journalism and you get more ads.