The Wall Street Journal. Reviews

by Brandyn G

I won’t comment on the journalism, because this is a review of TheWallStreetJournal itself. First thing to note is that it is clunky. This is worsened by the scrolling experiences which purposely slows the screen scrolling when you encounter an advertisement so you have to view the ad instead of just scrolling past. Additionally you cannot easily select text. I like to select the text and press “Look Up” to learn more about a certain word or phrase. The most you can do is long press a single word and it will give you the option to define that one word, or you can select the entire paragraph, no in between.

At first it might seem like glitches, but as an app developer myself, I know that you have to purposefully choose to implement these properties into your app. Lastly, the UI and search are difficult to navigate. If you are looking at economy news it gives you the ability to tap on a ticker symbol to view more info, but it frequently fails to even incorporate that feature into most ticker symbols rendering it effectively useless.

Best I can say is that TheWallStreetJournal is basically a reference for articles that you saw in the paper, but it doesn’t suit well as your everyday news experience.

by _Vices_

TheWallStreetJournal itself is ok and would probably be considered good for your average person. I have access to the Bloomberg Professional app for work though, so I don't use the WSJ app as I otherwise might as it can't really compete (it also costs a lot, lot less).

My one (I feel fairly major) complaint about TheWallStreetJournal would be in regards to its search function. There is no method available to sort search results (such as time ordered or relevance), resulting in searches where it takes me a while to find an article published that same day if I do not make my search more specific. This would've been acceptable five years ago, but this feature is commonplace in a lot of news apps nowadays.

I do appreciate the WSJ's efforts to remain balanced, though they do sometimes get a little off balance in terms of some of the op-ed's they publish from contributors and even with articles by some of their journalists who steer things too far right/left (those people are still entitled to their opinions, but they seem out of place in a paper from a news outlet trying to maintain balance in the world of today). And even then, I still appreciate the vast majority of what they publish, even if we don't always agree.

by Gumpy Doc

The latest version of the WSJ app has many excellent features. I like very much the real time updating of current news. The insertion of video embedded within articles adds a lot of texture and detail. It is extremely useful to have links to supporting material highlighted in blue allowing a quick trip to scan the related article.
I have only two complaints. First: many of the articles have animated memes or images that constantly alternate between one image and another producing pseudo-animation. This may be intended as an attention grabber, but it is also highly annoying and distracting. Seeing motion in ones peripheral vision tends to take the reader’s attention off the text and back to the animation. I have to resort to covering up the animation with one hand in order to continue reading.
My other complaint concerns full-page advertising appearing in a several page article. The software resists swiping past the advertising to the next page of the article. I realize that this is done so people like me can’t simply breeze past ad copy that they don’t wish to look at. When I had only the print version of the Journal, I could easily ignore the advertising copy. With the online Journal I have to fight ad copy that refuses to yield to a page-turn gesture. I don’t like paying more than $400 a year and find myself forced to look at something in which I have no interest.

by Pwjone1

Generally the WSJ articles are pretty good (and have improved over the years, especially online), but TheWallStreetJournal is a bit clunky compared to say Apple News+ or the New York Times app. But basically one usually reads the news not so that things can be fancy, but for the content. Apple News+ includes some WSJ articles, but basically the majority (and practically all the in-depth articles) are behind the paywall and the WSJ app. The coverage on business is pretty good, a lot more in depth explanations, writes are very good. The political coverage is OK, kind of right of center, although the opinion page stuff is pretty bad, the Murdochs are a little heavy handed there, that has gotten worse over the years. The cultural and general news coverage has gotten considerably better, at times rivaling the NYTimes, but the Times is still more in depth in this area. The WSJ app reads more like a traditional newspaper, you have to kind of page through it, hyper-linking is not great, more a throwback kind of approach, for better or worse.

by Plsemail

Update 11/18 - two years later - you keep losing eyeballs. TheWallStreetJournal is so heavy and complicated each article is painful to read. Your full screen ads between pages of the same article work poorly on ipad. If you only care about readers with the lates ipad keep doing what you are doing. But if you care about the rest of your readers who upgrade every four or five years, then stop making your app so hard to use. We read the wsj less because tour app is terrible a d slow. -----I have been using TheWallStreetJournal for two years. Downloading the daily edition over 3G and often wifi is painful, can take ten minutes to download, sometimes not at all on iPad, so I have to use the iPhone version to actually see wsj content on my daily commute. I end up using Bloomberg (both professional and consumer) versions instead for reading. Frustrating in that I have read the wsj for twenty years. I also do not like its usual non-compatibility with Instapaper which I use to catch up on my reading at nights and on weekends - this is something that wsj does not try to fix. The upshot is I use wsj content less and less, despite a premium price. This leads to further declines in readership for them, frustrating.

by Nana32512

I'm a 77 year old lifetime newspaper reader and have online subscriptions to the Washington Post (print as well as online versions) and NY Times as well as the WSJ. I download all 3 every day and wander through them getting the flavor of the coverage and the opinions. I would prefer to be able to download the print version of the WSJ so I could see the placement of articles the way I can with the WP but the WSJ app comes reasonably close. The strength of the WSJ app is the ease of scrolling through to find and read articles in each of the various sections. When all articles are simply shown in long scrolling lines placed willy-nilly on the screen, it is harder to sort out the "news" from the "opinions." It's hard enough to read news articles filled with speculative words like "could" or "might" mixed in with what actually happened. The WSJ is making an admirable effort to keep its news coverage balanced and factual and its opinion section fair. I appreciate that in today's hyper-polarized media environment.
BUT, the tech end is quirky. I don't like having an article disappear in the middle of my reading it. I don't like the fact that I then have to start over with TheWallStreetJournal to get back to where I was. SURELY YOU CAN FIX THAT!

by Joe@aol

Been a reader for over half a century. Find it a good source for generally unbiased news.

Lately they’ve established a really good and meaningful investigative news operation that’s exposed some really substantive issues.

On the downside, if you read the Current issue of the digital version, read with caution. In the What’s News section, it’s not really all “news.” They regularly slip in about 5 or 6 editorial and op-ed pieces, without clearly labeling them as such. I find that not only disingenuous but borderline dishonest. If you’ve read as long as I have, you can spot the ringers. Clearly, those signed by the Editorial Board, those with a by-line of a known member of that Board (if you can spot them), then, those with the author’s CV rather than a web address, first person and shorter pieces. If you’re like me, I prefer to skip the editorials entirely. But you have to read to the end, or at least glance at the end, to figure this out. And they’re plunked right in the middle of the issue, under the caption “What’s News.” C’mon WSJ. You can be better than that! Where’s your editorial integrity?

by Kimo Nuts 1

Cause without watchdog denial of of legit claims of all types will be swept under the rug forever and no matter which agencies you apply for assistance even with proper evidence whey will not honor it a Dhs evaluator revisited my claim in 2019 and 2020 and found I was placed in a wrong file because of the spelling of my name which was correctly up loaded to the zone and found to be incapacitated (INCAP) and social security disability is still saying I was overpaid and owe them 20,888 I’ve done some researching and 2019 because I was out of work from 2018 under doctors care for a preexisting disability under fmla I received a manual from my trust fund administrator called the plan and the fight I with my exemployer and their gang of units are playing their same game saying in 2008 they did something with the computer network and all records were lost so without evidence we have no proof so I sent in two sets to Dhs & Ssa 195 pages but things got worsted Irs is reporting to Ssa I was getting payment while claiming disability I discovering about a third party payer that was paying my worker compensation medical since 2003 although (I see claim for Wc denied) under Kaiser perm. I was covered under hippa and the privacy act they didn’t tell me and in 2018 I found out that privacy act is not to protect me it’s to protect them🦹🏼‍♀️

by Mickeyvoicky

I once enjoyed reading her opinion piece each week. I felt it contained observations on society and politics that were not based on her political view, but clarifying her thoughts on what average Americans were feeling and thinking about current events. Many days I said out loud that she really understood what I and many others were feeling in our hearts about the future of our country. I felt she was shaking her head in amazement or disgust or just smiling at the same moment that I was doing the same. We were in the same place at the same time. Then something changed. Was it the Trump rise in our country or was she just aligned with the elites I wonder? I no longer look forward to her articles and think she is less relevant to what I view the WSJ is trying to provide to its readers. Her articles now seem to be a political piece that is out of touch. I can get this type of journalism at a number of outlets like CNN or HuffPost. My faith in your paper is reduced whenever I read her smug hit jobs on Trump or actual improvements in our country.

by Alberto From Cuba

I am a long term subscriber to the Wall Street Journal and must report that I am very satisfied with this newspaper as it accurately records all facts and does an excellent job in fair, balanced and objective reporting. It is really the only newspaper that I truly appreciate and respect and read daily. Its journalists are very well versed in what they objectively report and reading them always gives a good perspective on what is going on in the world. It also has not only great financial and business coverage but also does an excellent job on the arts, literature, real estate, traveling and sports.
Congratulations, keep it up. You are unique.

All of the above I maintain. However the handling of the pages in TheWallStreetJournal has now become tedious and problematic. I turn the pages from right go left and now, many times an add pops out, from the left margin, for Northern Trust Bank which is a nuisance
to get rid of. It is bothersome and that is why I took one star off.

by Wmuss

I enjoyed the print edition for many years. I find the WSJ readable and significantly less biased than than WAPO and the NYT. I no longer read the NYT, WAPO or Huffington Post. I watch a lot of FOX and find CNN and MSNBC to be unbelievably biased. My pet peeves with the digital version of the WSJ is the way it is organized. It does not read like a newspaper and I find it difficult to find stories by headlines and importance. I find the digital version of the NJ Star Ledger much more readable and organized. I don’t particularly like what the paper says but I can find what I want to read by looking a pages and headlines. I guess I’m old fashioned, but I just can’t warm up to the digital version of the WSJ. The other pet peeve is if I go from an aggregator like Drudge to a linked WSJ article I run into the WSJ paywall even though I’m a subscriber and must then go to the WSJ app, log in and attempt to find the article I was trying to read and I’m usually not able to find it. Can’t there be a way to allow subscribers to go directly to the article without all the rigamarole. I read newspapers using headlines arranged by importance not section by section!! Photograph your newsprint edition an use an app like the Star Ledger and I would be a lot more pleased with the WSJ digital edition.
William E Musser

by D4bob

I rely on the WSJ for a good overview of major financial and economic and political news. The digital format is fantastic to read over in either a very systematic way targeted just the topics you are interested in after and skim of the front page, or in random way as you would flipping pages of the print addition and pausing when something catching your eye to delve into further. All with the benefit of no newsprint bleed onto your shirt cuffs and wasted paper left over. Useful hyperlinked cross-referenced information is simply not feasible in the print version.

The main weakness of the WSJ is it is often late covering with much substance or frequency the magnitude of developing financial, economic, or specific industry trends, especially emerging industries or sub sectors of existing industries. If a trend is discussed in WSJ, it has been on most experts in the fields involved radar for many months at a minimum.

Compared to 30 years ago, or even 15, the WSJ is significantly better at investigative breaking news stories.

by Mreyna310

Love WSJ and their informative articles. Much of what I read is used in decision making for stocks and my overall view of the economy. I still think that aside from the opinion section, WSJ is generally non biased when it comes to information. My only regret is that I don’t think WSJ checks on their membership much. I honestly think that some subscribers are bots who are only there to inflame readers and inject their own disgusting brand of politics. I don’t care much for politics and try to some our both parties from issues, but it seems that there are some members who consistently comment on every article no matter when it was posted which leads me to believe they are bots if that is even possible. I really wish that off someone from WSJ is reading this, you really need to check that. I subscribed because I am a young college student trying to understand the world as best I could and believed that I would find like minded people as subscribers as well. But the case is that this, most times, is no better than Facebook’s comment section.

by BethKenStI

I like the WSJ because it does the absolutely best job of reporting ALL news in an unbiased way. I can turn to the business section with a feeling of confidence that what I am reading is factual; I feel the same way about world and US news. I like reading it on my iPad because I can read as much or as little as I want at my own time AND I do not have to deal with disposing of the paper product. I enjoy the opinion page because it acts as a balance to the totally progressive liberal views expressed in virtually all other media. This is why I gave it five stars because these are the things that are important to me. What I do not like is the clear slant toward the very rich in the "fluff" pages. I understand that this is because the advertisers are interested in selling their products and it is the very rich who buy them. However would it be too much to ask that you include some content that those who take home less than $150,000 a year would actually like to hear about!

by Trinity School

My husband and I are life long subscribers and over the past few years, the WSJ is sadly going to the wayside for me. I live in NYC and used to receive the daily print version of both the NYTimes and WSJ. Inevitably, almost every time it rained, the NYT would be delivered in plastic bag and I’d wind up with a soaked Journal. I put up with it for some time registering numerous complaints and then just dropped it.

I am now online for both publications and others BUT the WSJ has fallen behind in my reading. There are many wonderful and insight articles that I’d like to send to me kids, colleagues, friends BUT the receiver has to be a subscriber and it’s very frustrating. I think The Washington Post got it right that you can view so many before subscribing which I eventually did. It’s a complete miss that someone thinks that the WSJ would lose out on subscriber revenues from allowing forwarding - probably quite the opposite as more readers may become interested.

I still read the WSJ but only occasionally and certainly not on a daily basis like I did starting in my 20s.

by BurhamDoc

News broadcasting much less the media at large has become a soap opera with writers and TV “newscasters” vying for rating rather than providing an honest narrative. A free and honest press is a necessary component to the viability of our freedom. My wife watches the soaps each week day. I am in and out of the TV room ....it may be a week or two interval before my soap opera exposure occurs....the plots are twisted, crazy but predictably illogical storylines . I really have no purpose for them but my wife feeds her were addiction to the writers’ and characters’ absurdities. She knows the storylines are pure fantasy but has come to know the various characters.
Why do I say this? If the truth is told, Americans turn on daily the cable and network news as well as the printed news of many of major cities newspaper to the same silliness and political absurdities. Thank the Lord for reasonable journalism in the Wall Street Journal. Keep doing your thing...if you do, I will stay onboard...truth fuels trust, the absolutely necessary ingredient for a free and honest government. It’s about checks and balances: government and the private sector.

by JazzyJane123

I never allow alerts from my apps, but this one I did and it has been perfect. A breaking news banner pops up and then I can decide if I want to click on it to read the rest of the article. If I’m in the middle of something, I can go back later and see the alerts I missed in notifications. Being able to customize what alerts I see and how often they will come is great as well. I’ve noticed on my watch I can read the headlines only, but they are color coded- red & blue. I haven’t figured out yet if that is to say what list they are from, or if they are showing what party is making those claims. One way or the other- I LOVE-finally having a way to stay up to date with National and some international news without having to listen to the continuous droning 24 hour news on TV and trying to pick out what is actually new. Now if the WSJ would just cover my local news life would be perfect. I’m not happy with any of the local news apps, but that only shows how good the WSJ is in comparison.

by Kiddkilleen

In an age where newsrooms have been hijacked by activists and ideologues, The Wall Street Journal stands as one of the last bastions of journalistic integrity - a refuge where readers can weigh the facts and decide for themselves.
Over the past two years, the number of publications I relied upon for news has quickly diminished.
This summer, I allowed my subscription to The Economist to lapse. I had been an avid reader for thirty years and decided to cancel after reviewing back issues and comparing them to recent stories. The time and effort writers of that bygone age invested in each article was readily apparent back then. Such effort is clearly lacking today.
The Economist is the latest in a series of journals that have abandoned integrity for political expediency. Intellectual laziness has crept into the news rooms.
I hope the Wall Street Journal is able to fend off this crippling journalistic disease for a few more years, but it is doubtful. American Universities are churning out intellectually stunted ideologues and mature sober reporters are just not sensational enough for the masses.

by Jints52

While still providing the most comprehensive view of finance, business, and markets, the Journal is ever so subtlety shifting away from (what I believed to be) the only truly unbiased American news outlet remaining. Since the leadership change, the liberal bias so pervasive across mainstream media has begun to seep into our beloved Journal. With the exception of the editorial pieces, which are of course meant to be biased, the absence of coverage around China’s culpability for Coronavirus, the incredibly limited coverage of the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden (as compared to the extensive coverage of the Kavanaugh allegations), and the absence of coverage of the politicization of the re-opening of the American economy leaves one to inevitable conclude that our culture’s pervasive anti-conservative bias has at last come for the last bastion of independent thought in American media.
A truly free society must have a media that presents the facts as they are, provides both sides of an argument, and (outside of an opinion piece) allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. I hope the Journal can help lead the way back to that place.

by 2CDReviews

Excellent content as always but the UI design sets it apart. Swipes switch the section. A simple implementation but an effective one. I wish more news organizations (*cough*nyt*cough*) would adopt this feature in their apps. It makes for a product that reads like a physical newspaper on the touchscreen. Not to mention a better setup to digest information.
Unlike a physical newspaper, breaking news can always be found on the front page! Content can also be displayed in dark mode which makes the whole experience easier on the eyes.
Market data is about as good as you want from a news organization. WSJ market data has a sleek presentation but I prefer the way that the Financial Times presents market data. Otherwise, an excellent broad stroke. But if you are looking for quantitative minutiae to sift through you are better off using your brokerage firm’s numbers and research.
Finally, the sync between devices is an excellent feature! As long as you are signed into to your WSJ account on all your devices you can start an article on one device and finish it on another! I see no reason to stop my subscription.

by Csdahl

We been dealing with this Issue for months now. We haven’t got a single paper delivery. Every time we contact the customer service, they make it sound like they’re going to talk to the local delivery people and get it fixed. However, it never gets fixed. They don’t let you cancel the service and keep giving a month or so free. We got in at a special but then we paid $45 a month for service we never received. When we asked for a refund, they gave two months of service free. What does that mean? When there was no delivery at all, we’re stuck to literally use the mobile app. Imagine getting a paper through mobile app when you paid for the paper one? The whole reason we paid for the paper is so it becomes a habit and we can read it in the morning. Mobile apps are good to read an article here or there but we can’t read the entire paper is in the mobile app. Plus we never get any special weekend additions. That was the whole point of subscribing in the first place. They are such a reputed paper but have the worst customer service. Even a corner restaurant is better than them. I highly do not recommend them. Regarding the content, of course they are the best.

by Sue In Henderson

It is very helpful to have TheWallStreetJournal for travels away from home where we can still read a real paper. It has flaws - especially with the crossword. There doesn't seem to be a way to stop the clock, other than clearing the puzzle; it doesn't offer the answers to the meta-puzzle in the Monday edition; and sometimes the crossword just isn't there. TheWallStreetJournal has no short way to print an article without all the graphics, bullets of secondary and irrelevant info on, and wasted space. I have to compile and edit an article in order to share articles since the WSJ no longer lets me send links to complete articles. C'mon folks. What better way to get your standard of journalism out there than by getting potential readers to see your work. Heck, you can even limit the number of articles we can share per day or month. And last, but not least, there seems to be 2 digital editions and some days, I am slipping between the formats and have no idea how or why. Is this really necessary? For all of the above, I have higher expectations for the Journal.

by Vwadeer

I’ll be interested to read the story someday about what happened to the Journal’s news editorial function. The evidence accumulates about the difficulty of finding young journalist who have survived our ideologically fixated colleges with critical analytical skills intact. There must be some though, and one always expected that WSJ, if anyone, would find and groom them to write with wit, energy and curiosity about what really happened “out there”.

Yet the news writing gets more shallow each year, more narcissistic and ideological, narrower and more disrespectful of readers who, the writers seem to neither know nor care, have come to hear the evidence so that we may form our own opinions. Each year preachier, each year more simplistic and, yes, so obviously biased.

The editorial pages still crackle, thank goodness, and occasionally even expose more than one side of complex issues. It’s less likely with each passing year, though, that the arguments and opinions of your best editorial writers could find support for their views in factual expositions of the news section.

by Amabala55

The reading format and layout is still better than most of the other digital subscriptions I read, but the latest updates move it backwards in some ways. Pictures blink or reload several times when moving through the issue and it loses my place in the issue when returning to read more. The annoying ads issue seems much better, so thanks for that improvement.

Update April 2018 - still the best news available, but it’s losing ground. Pricing has gotten very expensive, and the daily iPad editions load very slowly after the latest Apple software update. I have to open TheWallStreetJournal twice to see content. The first time just spins with no content for far too long; closing and reopening displays content on the second app open. I’ve deleted and downloaded TheWallStreetJournal several times to see if that helped, but it didn’t.

Update April 2019 - I’m experiencing app crashes several times a week; TheWallStreetJournal just unexpectedly closes while reading an article on my iPad. Transitions from pages and sections are slow and jerky at times even with 100G WiFi download speed; it is smooth when I turn off WiFi and view the issue without all the background activity that must be going on when connected. Also, I learned that saved articles on show on the device on which saved - I can’t see saved articles on my iPhone that I saved on my iPad and vice-versa.

by FCR#1

While we all expect the WSJ to be a free market advocate, and a flag waving supporter of this great experiment in democracy. Some on the board are reluctant to shout it from the rooftops. Some on the board are resistant to border protection, limiting immigration and defending America from unfair trade practices. A lot of space is required to refute them on those positions. Now we must say the Journal is one of the only media outlets that has anything good to say about our country. Mr. Riley and Ms. Kim Strassel are the exceptions. Ms. Strassel’s coverage of the Trump derangement syndrome has been worthy of many awards. She is an outstanding journalist seeking truth in the chaos of modern media spin. Mr Riley can always be counted on to write and project thoughtful pieces consistent with the facts and true to the the spirit of our founders. While many expect him to write on racial themes, because he espouses conservative ideas coming from a Blackman, I find his writing colorblind very reminiscent of Thomas Sowell one of the greatest intellects of our time. Mr. Riley’s opinion on all the matters he chooses to write about are excellent. True to the facts and directly clearly delineated.

by Sadaunhe

This is an update to my previous rating. The previous version performed very well on my iPhone. This version, however, has a bug that prevents access to seemingly random articles. At first, I thought the bug was limited to the Life & Arts section, but that no longer appears to be true, as various opinion and news pieces are now out of my reach. The error appears as, “Unknown error. If you continue to receive this error, contact customer service in the Profile section of TheWallStreetJournal ”. This would be comforting, if only I could find the profile section within which to contact customer service. TERRIBLE quality control. PLEASE fix this!

My previous rating was 2 stars. Based on several months’ use of the updated version, I’m MUCH happier. The errors I was experiencing have disappeared across all the platforms I use (OS X, Win 10, iOS). TheWallStreetJournal also seems to respond more quickly, and with better accuracy, when updating to the current issue. Thx for restoring my faith in your app.

by Grateful Engineer

I have dropped the local paper, and I’ve stopped watching Fox And CNN on any routine basis. The Journal continues to provide real, in-depth reporting that provides a factual analysis while containing editorial opinion to the editorial page.

I started following Peggy Noonan, among others from the Journal’s editorial page because of the rational arguments that they make that are based in fact, not conjecture or projection of their views upon those they profile. I especially appreciated Ms. Noonan’s article that described the lack of an entitlement mentality of students studying at Tennessee Technological University. Her contrast of their desire to learn how to do/make things better, versus the desire of students at several Ivy League colleges to learn how to use connections with other students, highlights the origin of our political leanings and self-interests.

The gift my father gave me of a Wall Street Journal subscription in college has turned me into a loyal subscriber of this fourth estate publication for the past 25 years.

by Havyhavy

I am a long time user of TheWallStreetJournal. Pros: content the same as the paper version, recent back-issues easily accessed, slide and glide thru articles, stable performance (had some bug issues in earlier releases, but seems fine now), and table of contents/sections works fine. Cons: biggest shortcoming is that while WSJ does give you a breaking news notification (I use an iPad-mini), if you click the notification it merely opens TheWallStreetJournal , but no further details are provided regarding that breaking news item. Some other news apps, for example the BBC's app and CNBC's app, is constantly updated with breaking news details. TheWallStreetJournal is just a snapshot of the print version.

Update....lately, everytime I launch TheWallStreetJournal , the WSJ white startup page just sits there, I have to close it and reopen for access to editions, sections menu. Needs fixed, but otherwise great (normally) editorial content, journalism and app.