St Louis Post Dispatch Reviews

Update: Every time I stop by StLouisPostDispatch to see if it’s any better, if I can read even one story, I am reminded how horrible it is — and I think the paper loses another opportunity for me to add to their readership numbers, to improve their metrics, to see the advertising, and to support their writers by participating. They won’t get $26/month from me for just one interest, and I wonder: Where do they make the most money? Digital subscriptions or advertising? They, obviously, want both. How many people have just walked away, taking their eyeballs with them?

I pay for great journalism, local and national, and I want to support the hometown paper and its writers (particularly the great Derrick Goold) … but $26/month is insane. (And is it a month or one time cost? I get confused.) I get digital editions of WaPost and NYT for much less. I don’t live in STL or the region, so I have specific interests: this case Cardinals, Blues, St Louis City FC … let me pay a fair price for these. On top of the economics, the digital app remains horrid in so many ways, including intrusive advertising and stunningly poor usability. Here is what the big wigs need to know: Instead of driving me to you, you’re driving me away. I want to support you, I want to pay you a fair price, but your economics and app make it impossible.

StLouisPostDispatch is terrible. Constantly crashing and when you can actually get it to work it constantly redirects you to ads. This forces you to leave the article you were reading and find where you left off. Huge waste of time and happens so frequently that I often just give up. Only reason I even look at it is for sports reporting. Which brings me to another problem of the scroll through article that forces you to hit little arrows to get to the next portion of the article. This feature rarely works effectively and is cumbersome to navigate. If it wasn't for my love of the Cards and Blues I'd delete StLouisPostDispatch and never look back. Perhaps some IT guy will see this review, try it out themselves, and make the necessary changes. But I doubt it, this problem has been ongoing for years.

…But as it stands, I am very disappointed with the digital platform. I am a subscriber, living in California, and the only reason I subscribe is to keep up with the great team of reported y’all have on the baseball beat. I am a huge fan of Derrick Goold and his team, but StLouisPostDispatch lets down their great coverage with articles that don’t open, sport section links that don’t work, difficult to navigate archives… it’s really a mess. I badly miss the standalone baseball app the PD used to have. It was also buggy, but at least I was able to navigate to the content I wanted. Considering ending my subscription and just getting my baseball news from national outlets. Would kill me, but no point in paying for a service I can’t use.

Paper quality is very poor. Cannot fold-it back easily content is poor Nothing in it worth reading. No national news or what is really happening The items you do have are too left wing especially those people on editorial pages who i don’t even bother with.
I only get the Sunday paper as dailies are non informative and the cost is a joke.
Suggest u either get some good writers or close it down.
PS. I am not black and the constant stories you have about black people are sad but of no interest. Your paper is constantly filled with their stories and plights which are not interesting. You have readers in west county, i wud suggest you play to them that are willing to spend a buck fifty. J Lunny chesterfield

I subscribe to four newspapers and visit many others. The Post Dispatch app is by far the worst newspaper app I visit and quite possibly the worst overall app on the planet that charges subscription fees. StLouisPostDispatch Constantly requires a re login, articles don’t load or have missing links, tons of articles from newspaper are not on StLouisPostDispatch and stories are often days old. Literally junk.

I don’t understand how this business doesn’t scrap StLouisPostDispatch and start over. Obviously they are losing money and don’t feel it’s worth the cost or effort, just as they don’t seem willing to pay for actual journalists? Good luck with that strategy as you continue to turn off customers and swirl around the drain. Once my promotional subscription is over I won’t even think of paying the full rate for this garbage.

The Post Dispatch just doesn't get it. Apparently it's run by nothing but millennial's now so all they want to cover is the city of St. Louis. Where perhaps 2% of their customers live. There's a reason no one buys the newspaper and few use StLouisPostDispatch .
Pop up ads are yesterday's approach to revenue. No finer way to run off your diminishing audience. But they just don't get it. And they don't care. They probably have five years left before they close the doors completely. Sad, but it has been their stupid decisions that have hastened their demise. People won't put up with pop up ads, in particular, pop up video ads! Jeez! Idiots!
I'm assuming the last adult at the Post Dispatch took the early buyout or was simply fired.

The pop-up ads are now so continuous it’s like swatting flies. The video adds that show up from he side at full volume are the worst of these. Seeing the whole screen while reading a story is almost impossible to do for more than a few seconds at a time.
Also, how hard could it possibly be to have the prep sports scoreboard—one of the main reasons I open StLouisPostDispatch —be set to open automatically to the current day and year. To get to a current score, you have to change the year (seriously, who need to be able to go back to scores from three years ago anyway) from one menu, then select the correct month, and the the correct date. I get that it’s free and all, but c’mon.

What happened? I used to read multiple times a day now I’m lucky to read it once a week. In the beginning StLouisPostDispatch was great. Headlines with thumbnails to easily navigate through the stories. Now we have this a nonsensical top row you scroll right through. The rest of the rows you scroll own through. Large pictures that are sorted by category not when added so you end up scrolling through stuff you’ve already read to find something you didn’t. I normally just give up and don’t bother. Bring back the easy to navigate format and for the love of Pete bring back landscape viewing as well as portrait.

I’ve emailed the Post on this and got no response. I thought this “bug” would surely be noticeable and, since it’s so annoying, would be fixed soon. It hasn’t and I think I know why. Why would frequent refreshes be so beneficial to an app provider when it’s so annoying to users? Revenue!! The more it refreshes the more the page view count increases the more revenue from advertisers. So, the Post is willing to let the user experience suffer if in means greater advertiser revenue. The lesson: if you still want to use StLouisPostDispatch be light on your screen touch and remember how far you are into an article should you slip up and have the page reload.

I realize that funds are needed to support StLouisPostDispatch (and the newspaper), but this site has way too many ads. For instance, I opened a story, and there was a full page ad before going to the site. Once I reached the story, there was an ad at the bottom of the page, and then a video ad that popped up over the text, and a still ad that also pops up over the text. I subscribe to the print version of the Post-Dispatch, and would appreciate it if there were a way that subscribers could avoid the ads. If there is such a function on this site, it is not clear on how to do that.

At first I found it difficult to get used to after decades of reading the print edition. Now I am enjoying it on my iPad and desktop.
I might add that the P-D has one of the worst phone support teams I have ever dealt with. It took about six calls with different reps to get the cancellation of my print subscription effected correctly and my digital subscription activated properly. I got so much conflicting information from them. Bad PR for the paper.

Latest addition to my review. I lowered my rating because very recently the pages on the e edition have been freezing in place. Cannot move position of page. The bottom menu does permit moving from page to page, but cannot move the page itself to fully read articles.

I would give StLouisPostDispatch 5 stars, but...I’m really getting tired of the annoying ads!!! I know news apps need to run them, but the latest ones are really interfering with my ability to read a simple new story! I can’t stand the videos that randomly pop up on the right side of the screen. They block the text, and then if one comes up and you’re scrolling and accidentally click on it, the video takes over the screen blaring music even though your phone is set to silent. Then the small video ad that pops up from the bottom has an “x” so small, that it’s practically impossible to close it without opening up the ad several times. Ugh! Excessive advertising like this is more likely to keep me from using StLouisPostDispatch .

I really appreciate the work that has been done to improve StLouisPostDispatch. For example. Making most of the story links with a white background and better color font. There is one issue both my husband and myself keep having with using StLouisPostDispatch on our iphone 7 phones. While reading an article, the page will constantly refresh and take us back to the top of the article. We are continually scrolling back through trying to find where we left off. I remember one time recently, I had this happen five or six times reading an article and just gave up. I was hoping this would be fixed in the latest update bit it has not. It would be great if this could be addressed in the coming updates. Thanks

First of all, I agree with the negative reviews of the latest update. It is difficult to view on my I phone 6s. The old version using a text-based list was much easier to use and quicker. I could swiftly view the articles and get to what I wanted. The large picture graphics in the new update align with many of the more modern news sites but I find it, like so many things in life these days, to be dumbed down. I still take the print edition and totally prefer it over digital. Interestingly, I found that if I sign up for the digital edition I get my delivered paper at a lower monthly rate. Go figure. But it shows the power of those annoying digital ads - that’s where the money is. I will continue to read the print version and use the digital edition for late breaking updates, all the while keeping in mind the liberal bias in the news articles and the ridiculous lack of any alternative viewpoints on the editorial page.

I like receiving alerts of headline news. It is a good way to keep up when I am busy. I disagree with the complaints in other reviews about the number of crime in St. Louis. Please don't cut them out. I do want to know, especially when there are protests and such going on. My only complaint is that you wait until after the fact. I wish you would send crime alert concurrently, so I know to avoid the area at the time. I almost walked into the Galleria during the protests last week, but did not out of pure luck. Thirty minutes after the protests were over, you sent an article about what had happened. If the police know, you should know. Don't wait.

STL PD is a legacy institution in St. Louis. I have great respect for their investigative reporting as well as their centrist editorial content (called "liberal communist socialist" by all the pathetic sheep extremists of the radical right.) Very balanced factual reporting. Their new app can be awkward to use at times, but what modern "new tech" app isn't, these days? LOL Overall, they kept organization and navitation simple, unlike many, with a central Main Menu available at all times. I use it often. Four stars due to just a bit too many pop up ads.

There is nothing more frustrating and annoying on my phone than those full screen ads WITH BLARING AUDIO that pop up when certain articles load. Even when your phone is in silent mode! As soon as the screen goes dark to load one I quickly close StLouisPostDispatch and go do something else.

I suppose it’s a small price to pay for quality journalism that is essential to our city. But it’s too bad we live in a time where readers have to navigate a minefield of truly obnoxious ads in order to access vital content.

As a child I grew up with the afternoon P-D thrown on our lawn each day. The portion I read first changed with my maturity but the concept of reading it was formed early on. When I moved out of the family home after college I continued to pay for information at my door. Over the last 46 years as a single beginning a working career to a retired married person the P-D has been part of my routine. It has clarified issues of the day as well as packed breakables for the various addresses I have had in my life. My husband and I are faithful recyclers and hope the P-D paper copy continues to serve in its final form.

Since I wrote the paragraph below I came back to give them a 5 again. I'm amazed at the folks that seem bothered by the ads, etc. I wonder if they watch TV. Even most of the cable channels I watch have tons of ads and I pay for that. The news comes out at quite a pace and sp. errors are to be expected when there is no time to proofread and correct. Keep up the good news as I have grandkids and still like the "no-landfill" aspect.

I read this almost every day and am grateful for the easy way to keep up with happenings in STL as well as not putting pounds of newspaper in the trash or even the recycle bin. Thanks

I hope you don't try to improve too much, it's my favorite local news app. I especially like the way the font changes when read sideways and you made it so I can use it when I'm out of wi-fi with my ipod touch. KMOV use to be like that but made changes and now I can't use it out of wi-fi. The only improvement that would be a plus is when you close then open StLouisPostDispatch back up, you can continue where you left off. This will be my most used app- Thanks!