POLITICO Reviews

by AudioMetrix

this app is a great news outlet, but their app has been a failure for quite a while. Half the time it works, and half the time it will not load new articles for a week+.

Additionally, their media implementation for things like the Global this app articles is poor and hijacks the audio from whatever you've playing in the background. And if you try to resume your music, for instance, it retakes the audio as soon as you reopen the article. This is just poor coding.

It's a shame, really, because I've been a huge supporter of this app for years. But their app has continued to significantly decline over the last year. And if I can't read articles on the subway because POLITICO is so poor, the NYT will continue to have my subscription.

by Anencephalic

The content is worthwhile, but it's like the creators of POLITICO want to prevent you from reading it. The "navigation" is like blindly jumping through hyperspace. You have no idea where you might end up. I try swiping left and right but, instead of smoothly moving between stories, it's all twitchy and spastic. I can see the edge of a story I want to get to, but I can't make it land on that story. Just moving my finger slightly to the left and right, which should just move me between two stories, flashes glimpses of 4 or 5 different articles.

Other news apps give the impression that there's some stationary content that their app provides a window into. You have a sense how the stories are laid out and where you are in that context. Not so with the this app app. Instead it's chaos. Blank pages, stories with a picture but no content, videos with no play button. It's incredibly frustrating.

I am on an iPad Air 2 with iOS 10.3.2.

by Lebrona

I love this app and the content from the journalists is top notch and reliable. HOWEVER POLITICO is the literal worst. It logs me out every single time I close POLITICO it seems and will not remember my login info, so each time I go to save a story it makes me log in again. Plus it is so glitchy! There have been several times that I have been in the middle of the story and it switches back to the home screen and i can no longer find what I was reading. Please fix this!! I beg you. Also, has anyone else noticed the “ads” getting shadier and shadier? Each one is now a “corona virus cure” or a “poll” from a Trump PAC. Yikes. this app is a reputable and important source of journalism with integrity, but for the love of Pelosi please fix the bugs.

by Reedmanmatt

I’ve been reading this app for years and love the content and analysis, but POLITICO is in sore need of an update. It’s always been clunky in that you never know if it’s actually downloaded all the daily content you want before going offline, leading to frustration. But over the past couple of months, it’s simply been crashing very often, to the point that it sometimes won’t function at all. In the years I’ve been using POLITICO, the NYTimes, WaPo, and other news apps have been updated multiple times, but this app seems to have built this thing around 2012 and never touched it again. It’s too bad, because their great reporting and writing deserves better.

by Hdbehr

The writers need to rise up against the developer. They are detracting from your great content.

I like to move thru the page methodically from top to bottom, and then POLITICO randomly refreshes and I have to find my place again. And for whatever reason the Top News is the only place that I can't turn this problem off.

Suggestion, allow me to turn this off and add a new feature that will highlight what's new after I refresh. Then to have provided something worthwhile.

by IPadAppReviewer

I’ve been using the this app app for years.
The good: the content is very good. It’s comparable to what they have in their website and their breaking news is ahead of most other sites.
The bad: POLITICO simply doesn’t work when you’re offline. Try accessing it when you’re in the subway and no luck! And this even after you’ve been reading a few minutes before. At this stage it’s inexcusable that they don’t cache the content and let you access what you’ve already downloaded.
Even worse, when you’re listening to music via Bluetooth and you launch the this app app, it pauses your music! Huh???
this app, please fix these egregious bugs and I’ll come back and give a good review.

by Tyre_spy2

Being a foreigner, downloading this app was useful because it gave me a sense on how US politics work. What sets it apart from the other apps was Its main selling point that its unbiased and only discusses hard core Political Topics.

Not anymore, something happened to the contents. At first with news articles on events like protest rallies, appear yet noticeably other articles of the same like terrorist attacks are absent. Then the articles' tone changed from an unbiased tone to a more shrill one. I don't mind the usual liberal view, but the lean to the left found here is getting closer to the regressive kind.

If I wanted a biased news source, this app wouldn't be my first choice... but now it has become one. Sad to see a once good news source turn.

by Mae Moo

I check this app multiple times per day and really like the articles and coverage of many topics. The Opinion pieces are good and could see more if them. More articles on the grassroots organizing coming out of social protest such as “Run for something “ the centrist Democratic races in Congress and state offices are very interesting and important. Please cut off Facebook ads after a million impressions as I am way over the top on these after saying “No” a million times.
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The new version is worse!! It is impossible to navigate to an article list because there is no back button/arrow. I have to close POLITICO and start over with the article list beginning.

by Tyler Arson

Some of the best content out there, but please update POLITICO . POLITICO is better than the Economist’s but far behind NYT, WaPo, and Bloomberg, and even the scattered WSJ app has better responsiveness. I’m very surprised when top outlets like the Economist and this app underinvest in their apps, as if their astute readers will overlook it. That’s an easy way to end up a failed publisher. If I don’t like POLITICO I’ll use it less and your advertisers will get fewer impressions to me, and you’ll mess up the financial equation for your journalists.

Keep it simple if you need to, but make POLITICO work better and faster. Unless you think core D.C. readers don’t care, but I bet they do.

by Leturinnergeekspeak

I agree with most other complaints I see in reviews. so many people in your target audience read the news on their phones. and yet your app is substandard. who’s managing this fiasco??

My main complaint: i find great content and can’t finish an article without getting kicked back to the home page every two minutes. honestly. its that frequent. and i your long form articles are great! the top reason i read this app.

Get a clue! please, please pleeeeeease …Spend the time & resources to fix these issues. End the torture!

by Deft Advocate

I have always liked POLITICO. With the newest update however, once you have chosen an article to read, you can’t get back to the article menu. Instead you have to keep scrolling thru one article to the next, to rotate thru them all to find the ones you want.

To me this is a step down from the prior edition’s layout, where you could scroll down the articles based on their topics, and not have cycle thru every single one to the topics you actually wanted to read.

Perhaps the developer should do another update, to bring back the functionality of the prior iteration’s ability to allow the reader to see all the articles’ headlines at once, and for a reader to return to the main page with the article headlines once they have finished an article.

by ThatReviewerGuy1

POLITICO is ok when it works, however it does not reload/refresh new stories easily..
I pull down on the main page and it shows as updating but then nothing happens, no new stories. I know it's not working right because the stories will be several days old (and yes, my internet connection is fine). The only way to get it to update is to try and refresh it multiple times and then kill POLITICO 's task and reopen it and have it load all over again, a fairly painful process when just looking for some quick news.

by Rob B. In Florida

Excellent content on the whole, but good luck reading it if your vision is less than superhero strength. Tiny font size (on iPad) with no way of changing it. Photo captions are so small they require a magnifying glass. This used to be an adjustable setting, but has been removed for unknown reasons. Consequently this app has dropped from one of my go-to news sources to an also ran. If they make it more accessible I'll be back.

by Coco Cherrell

This thing is terrible. I look for the author and/or a short recap of the story. Now gone. Horrid, horrid, horrid. Will probably delete. Used to be my go-to. Now, the last thing I look at.
Sad. Wish Axios did an app. Know the history here!! Signed up for their newsletters. You lost a fan, even though I am a conservative. Good luck. You’ll need it with this terrible new app

by Kk100

POLITICO is simply the worst of all the news outlets. I have this image of the creators just laughing at us as we try to read their content!
this app is an important media site and their content is terrific. POLITICO simply won’t let you read what’s there.
My favorite is when POLITICO suddenly pulls up a full page ad from which there’s two alternatives - click on it and be taken to safari or POLITICO Store, or simply exit POLITICO . No chance you’re going to actually finish the article or continue using POLITICO for that session at least.
Mind boggling.

by Ravingrusset

And it’s free which many are not. This is my first “go to” news app as the journalism is so well done and I feel like it is as objective in its reporting for being a progressive news outlet. There are some smart cookies who work for this news outlet and I like reading about all the view points as well as the factual news. I am a child of post WWII which means I have been thru the Nixon impeachment, the anti war movement thru the 70’s and became an independent leaning toward the Democratic Party. I read many news apps every morning yet this by far my favorite.

by Micksr

I am an avid, religious reader of this app, have been for years. Though I don’t like the new app upgrade, it stinks because I find it HARDER TO NAVIGATE and upgrading to the new app made me lose ALL THE ARTICLES I had Saved to read.

My poor review of POLITICO certainly doesn’t mean I will stop reading this app, I will I just don’t like the new app design.

by Prince 200

Reading this app several times daily is an essential to get an accurate assessment of what is actually happening in the Capitol. Trumps news releases are very often useless. Republicans in Washington who could correct misstatements seem to be som afraid of Trump’s tweets to contradict his lack of knowledge of science or efforts to bend facts to his personal world view. Sad. I find this app to be accurate. Thanks!

by MateoDC

Easy way to periodically check in on the Roller Derby that is DC politics. Not having the refresh issues others are reporting. Was running it today on home network and Sprint LTE and content rolling in regularly and without delay. And this app is content-rich at a time when many of us are (perhaps excessively) refreshing our news feeds to watch the latest episode of The Madness of King Donald.

by Jasper Hunter

Forget the negative reviews, as of Feb 16, 2018, this is a rock-solid app that is easy to navigate (as long as you don’t start clicking before the first page is loaded).

Articles may seem shrill to alt-white readers who prefer their fake world, but we ARE under constant attack and this app is one source that can be trusted to fact-check before publishing.

Thanks to this app we now know that Russia has been waging “electronic warfare” (Russian words) against democracies for years.

by Jezinecka

I thought it was a genuine news source at first. They even occasionally speak from both sides of a mouth, but don’t get fooled. It is yet another right wing propaganda tool. I was still using it long after I figured it out until they started to chase me with ads to support “president Trump and his crusade against the fake news”. Yep, that was one bs too much for me. I prefer actual facts over made up lies that change each day, depending what happened in 45’s hollow-head at around 3am the night before. Pathetic at its lowest.

by Emile33995

Something has gone wrong with this app and POLITICO. Or they’re asleep at the switch because for days now the opening top story at the top of the current edition is now more than three days stale. In other words they do not bother to keep the site current which is peculiar and embarrassing for well known current news site in the digital age. If the site has a place to call the above to its attention, I cannot find it.

Bottom line, don’t waste your time until they fix it.

by Pixel Passion

Once again the this app app fails to refresh. The same articles have been showing for 4 days now. Restarting the iPad and even reinstalling POLITICO does not solve the problem.

This has been a long standing bug in POLITICO and I can't understand why it is still not fixed. Love this app's content, hate POLITICO . I just pull the website up in a browser now as POLITICO is too much frustration.

Update: A year after my above review the problem keeps surfacing. POLITICO simply refuses to update the content. Problem repeats on different devices including the latest the current model iPad Pro. Still showing the headline from a week ago. Rebooting, reinstalling do nothing. Come on guys.

by Elmo Lincoln

Ok, it’s six days later and content finally seems to have updated ... I’ll maintain the one star rating until I see if it holds then will go back to a higher rating.

Today’s Monday, last new content was last Thursday ... tried deleting then reinstalling POLITICO , same deal — what gives?

Still no new content, rating reduced to one star and will delete app (again). May try again in several days. Is no one from this app reading these pleas for updated content???

by 范明先

this app has done some great reporting in the last week, but you wouldn’t know that based on POLITICO . It last updated news stories on Thursday, December 12. I tried deleting and reinstalling, but the news is still stuck on the same stories. Finally visited the website today to find newer news. Defeats the purpose of having an app. I hope this will be fixed.