Sacramento Bee News Reviews

The Sac Bee’s app is horribly unstable on my iPhone 13. A few seconds after articles are opened for reading, they abruptly close. Reopening articles is pointless, as they immediately close again. This happens with 10-20% of the articles I try to read. Deleting and re-installing SacramentoBeeNews does not help. I’ve been a subscriber for over 20 years, and this problem has only been present for the past year. I thought it would be a temporary issue, but it certainly is not. It’s way past time for Sac Bee to get this fixed.

We had the printed version of the Sac Bee for many years but had to give it up because of consistently horrible delivery service and lack of any real help from customer service. Got the eEdition and got used to it fairly quickly and it was great! But now this new e version is garbage and very frustrating to use (can’t see whole pages, can’t clear out the ads to get more viewing space, can’t jump to sections I want to get to and too many other issues to list here!). You ruined what was a great way to read a digital version of your paper online. One thing the Sac Bee does appear to be good at, helping people to decide to cancel their subscriptions and get their news elsewhere. Congrats.

I read the online (web) version of the Bee, and it’s awful. Hard to maneuver, buggy, and often slow and cumbersome. Worse are the adds that pop-up at the bottom of the screen which I feel shouldn’t be there. The paper already has adds, and I’m paying for a subscription that shouldn’t include those pop-ups! The Bee should take a good long look at how the San Jose Mercury News provides its electronic newspaper, and adopt its method. Come on, Bee: You can do way better, and, at the very least, get rid of the pop-up adds!

I work in state government and see first hand how often this paper gets the facts wrong on purpose. When you know the real story first hand and then you read what these guys write about it, you know the fix is in. It has to be on purpose because they never make a mistake that makes the left look bad, only the right. They recently announced they will be paying their “journalists” based on the number of clicks their stories get. Wow! That won’t encourage misleading or untrue inflammatory headlines and stories now will it? Their parent company filed for bankruptcy for a reason. Defeat SacramentoBeeNews!

The old app worked great. I could enlarge the page and still be able to scroll down to the bottom of the paper. It was just like reading a print. Now the online version and SacramentoBeeNews are difficult to use, won’t enlarge without cutting off part of the page, and the ads are annoying. Seriously, why do I want to see someone’s fingers handling something gooey with a caption about what not to eat. I don’t need click bait in my paper with disgusting images. I just want to read the paper and have it large enough that I don’t have to squint. Hope you read this and fix it. I like the Bee, but not if it’s hard to read.

The previous app (SacBee eEdition) worked fine. Allowed full page view and was easy to navigate. Moving from page to page or section to section was easy.

However, this new app, which is the only available now, oct 1, 2019, is enough to make me cancel my subscription to the Bee after 50 years!
Frustratingly slow page loading in the eEdition. Lack of full screen view. Needing to re-log when switching sections. Using the browser instead of all contained in SacramentoBeeNews ? I can go on, but become more incensed as I do. Don’t need this. I give the Bee seven days to correct/return to previous app, or I no longer subscribe.

SacramentoBeeNews doesn’t work well at all. After nearly 40 years as a subscriber to the print version I finally cancelled it because of horrible service and the fact the news in the paper was at least 24-48 hours old. I’ve been trying to use the digital version but it is unfortunately very difficult to use. The news coverage is much better in the digital version but half the time it won’t let me on. Plus they can’t get my billing right even though they take my money monthly. I subscribe to several other newspapers and I’ve never had any problems like I have with the Bee. Plus...there is no sacbee e-edition in the Apple App Store.

I have subscribed to The Bee for decades and enjoy reading in reporting, even when I travel around the world. Reading the eEdition in the full page version, exactly like the paper, was the best feature. Being able to scroll through pages at the bottom as a full view worked perfectly, too. This new version is horrible and earns a rating of MINUS stars! Difficult to navigate, half pages bombarded by flashing adds which cause print to blur each time they change, trying to toggle back and forth to read an entire article-no, no, no! Don’t know who the bright spark is who came up with this new format, but I just want my old version again!!!!

It is amazing to see a 4.1 star rating on SacramentoBeeNews. After the fiasco of the last 3 weeks of constant promises SacramentoBeeNews is “fixed”, “better”, etc. the reviews indicate a desire for a “0” star review or minus 0 for a true and well-deserved rating. It would be reasonable to give us an honest game plan.
Is this even fixable? Are you in the process of going back to a format that worked? Do you have no respect for the intelligence of your customers?
This is like “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Not seeing it! Not believing it IS fixable. Why did you not run a pilot program prior to roll out?
Whoever is the current editor should graciously throw in the towel and resign!
Let’s update the new overall rating from 4.1 to an actual 1, if my math serves correctly.

I did not know that the Sac Bee app was going to change, and I was very confused when I couldn’t access my paper anymore. The new app just opens the paper in the browser. When you download it there is no index to navigate the paper. Also the feature for enlarging text on an individual article is gone. These are two features that I really miss. I’ve been reading a paper all my life, and I have been using the e-edition for 12 years, but it may be just too much trouble to continue. The update to SacramentoBeeNews is a huge step backwards for the reader.

The Sacramento Bee’s prior app was not very good and this one is even worse. SacramentoBeeNews is missing important features that I believe a lot of readers would like. To me the most important is the ability to download and read offline the current days newspaper. I could do that with the prior version, but not anymore with this new app. Another missing feature is the ability to share an article. Again, past app you could do it, now that ability has been taken away. If you have the intent of adding these features to this new app, why would you launch this new app that is not fully featured??
Also, I find it hard to believe that your true app rating is 4.2.

I have found that the current eEdition is an extremely poor substitute for the prior version of the online / app software. I am so tired of the jumping screens, ads, popups, etc. I use an iPad daily to read the paper and when opening SacramentoBeeNews , all I see are ads and no paper.

I have found that links to other pages in the paper no longer work and I have to constantly scroll back and forth to read a single story. If I download the paper, the download time can very from 1 minute to greater than 5 minutes or not a all. Also, there is no directory / index to find specific areas of the paper.

I am paying good money for a newspaper subscription and not all of the online ads. Please bring back the old software or remove all of these ads!

Not sure why the Bee does not address the problems with its E-Edition. On my iPad, the print is fuzzy and does does not focus for quite a few seconds each time I go to the next page...annoying and dizzying at best. There are ad banners at the bottom of each page that are constantly changing and moving which is distracting when trying to read an article. This is in addition to all the other ads within the paper, which are expected.
I’ve messaged the Bee several times alerting them to these issues and they are non responsive. If the Bee wants to improve its readership, these basic issues should be addressed.
Basically if you’re looking for a liberal, biased news source that is difficult to read and navigate you’ve come to the right place.

The online version is impossible to read as there is no room for the actual content on the screen so I have to download the e-edition to make readable. I tap on icon and today’s paper is there. I tap download and screen goes dark like its downloading but it’s not. I then have to go to the upper left corner, hit e edition, find today’s edition and then hit download. What a pain. In fact every few weeks when I have to re-login there are new issues. This is the worst most inconsistent app ever....

idea what they wetTakes 4-5 clicks to get to the e-edition which then hangs for awhile if it even comes up. The e-edition is unreadable so you have to download to make readable. Then the download then hangs up assuming it comes up.
It’s a horrible app. Waste of time. A 3rd rate app by a 5th rate newspaper. Yesterday’s news tomorrow is their slogan.

I’ve had very little trouble using the beta testing version of the e-edition on SacramentoBeeNews , with the exception of the comics sometimes. The comics often get screwed up and hard to navigate. However, since the beta e-edition has been replaced with a totally different looking “live” e-edition, I have been unable to access SacramentoBeeNews without it crashing. I can still get into the e-edition through the internet, but SacramentoBeeNews keeps crashing on me at this point. The Bee moved their customer service department, which used to be onsite and staffed with Sacramento-based employees, to a foreign country where the reps don’t care if you’re having service problems so I’m hoping this review causes someone in IT to fix the e-edition on SacramentoBeeNews so it doesn’t crash SacramentoBeeNews , which is worthless to me right now.

The “new” beta version arrived without notice and without an option to opt-out. Non-professional. It’s not all that bad except for one CRITICAL element. It doesn’t permit landscape display except on the first and last pages of a section. The FAQ says you can just rotate you iPad, pinch and zoom, or select individual articles. Note that when you select individual articles, they are littered and over-filled with distracting ads. I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just fix this. I high school programmer could take care of this.

The whole Bee is essentially an editorial. If you know something about a story, you can see their bias shining through. In addition, the writing quality is has fallen off. Spelling errors, wrong word choices, and sentences that either don’t make sense or contradict are alarmingly common.

There is no way that the rating of 4.3 out of 5 is honest. How many bots did it take, SacBee? The majority of the ratings are one star, for very good reasons. I’m a long time subscriber to the Bee print edition, but had to cancel because the delivery people had a hard time delivering more than 4 days a week. So I payed for the online e-edition. Isn’t it fraud when someone takes your money and gives you a non-working product? I need to read the e-edition on my iPad. Nope; it works on my desktop, but not on the specific device I bought it for. Bottom line: it’s horrible and if the Bee finally does go out of business it’s their own fault for not doing the job they were payed to do. And . . . This is no small point: SacramentoBeeNews does not include the comics. What is wrong with your people?? It appears your primary objective is to drive customers away. I WANT to support journalism, but your company makes it more and more difficult to do so!

Since I subscribe to the print version, I frequently find a story I’d like to share with someone who does not. With the confusing top line of types of stories, where you find duplicate entries galore and seldom any features beyond insipid sports writing (not including Joe Davidson, who is first class), you have to look through all the headings under each banner to see if the article you want might be there.
I don’t understand why the website wouldn’t organize under more traditional headings: Top Stories, National News, International News, Local News, Business, Sports, Opinion, and then Features or special groups of features like Food.
Nor do I understand why there is no search function to use so you don’t have to scroll through all the entries to see if your article can be found.
All the stories now are in digital form. Pay some competent web designer to have the site do a far better job of mirroring the printed version.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Good job with the new app. It used to be so clunky and a pain to use and seemed like it was designed by an amateur . Now I think I actually like it better than my other newspaper apps like the WSJ that I used to compare it to. The bar was definitely raised with this one.

This new app is clumsy and completely user UNFRIENDLY!!
You have been “had” gentlemen of the Bee. Not only is it time
Consuming and awkward. You gave us readers no heads up in advance, which i find dismissive of you.
I cannot understand the thinking behind this change at all-I’m going back to the print edition.

This is so difficult to load - it takes FOREVER! The old app was much faster, easier to manipulate and worked well on my computer, phone and iPad.