The Raleigh News & Observer Reviews

I have been using the N&O digital app for some time. My wife reads the actual paper and I read the digital version. In the past TheRaleighNewsObserver worked fairly well. With the most recent updates however it has become totally useless. We pay for our full subscription and now every time I try to log on it tells me I need to log on because it freezes all the stories and will not let me proceed. I enter the proper information and it still gives me the same message. I am paying for something that is totally useless. When it was working what I didn’t care for is that in the past you could see what the actual printed paper looked like and read it digitally. Now that option does not exist plus I don’t see on the digital version where you can read the funnies. There is not much that I care to read in the N&O because they have become so slanted in their reporting and they have an obvious agenda but I could read the funnies without their interpretation of what’s funny.

We subscribe because we like to read the paper - on paper. We do not subscribe so the carrier may deliver when he/she wishes, forcing us to read the paper online. If we were regularly to read it online, we would not need the print edition. And in fact we are not really sure we need the print edition anymore anyway, since more and more print edition copy has already appeared online by the time we see it in print.

Also what happened to your commitment to the communities you serve? Who in Raleigh cares to read extensively about Charlotte or even Durham? We subscribe to the Raleigh paper. Give us coverage of Raleigh - thorough coverage, including arts and culture in our city - and not just bus-&-truck shows and presentations by your remaining big advertisers. Service should be the name of your game.

The previous version of this Ap was much better. I like reading the print version which fits my home delivery version. The new Ap distorts the page making it less readable, and it continually closes when I am in the middle of the paper requiring me to waste time scrolling back through the whole paper again. As much as I love the N&O and like to keep up when I travel, I am about to give up.

Update: This Ap keeps going from bad worse. I am about to cancel my subscription altogether. I really regret feeling this way because I believe in the importance of being informed as an important responsibility of being a good citizen, and I believe the N&O has an important contribution to make. I just wish it were accessible without requiring so much wasted effort every time I try to open the Ap. (Other Aps, including ones requiring a subscription do not require a new sign in every time it they are opened).

Terrible app. First of all, this is the original, web based app rolled out years ago, prior to the Olive Software version. So, this is more a weblink iPad widget for a Safari bookmark than an actual app. It was obsolete then, and ancient now. Page view is so clunky, the page is blurry and sits there 10 minutes trying to load. There is no dedicated page view. Loads slowly, text is blurry, there is no function to share stories on social media any more. Flash ads intrude on readability and take over the page, and freeze TheRaleighNewsObserver . McClatchy, not content with ruining newspapers, has now made reading the e-edition impossible. What are they trying to do, destroy newspapers completely? “ Old Reliable “ has become unreliable and this is perhaps the most ill conceived app ever made.

Edit: Doesn’t load at all now. Needs ZERO stars. Will be cancelling my subscription.

Not sure why I haven't cancelled subscription, as I've not been able to read the News & Observer since new app/desktop version began in October 2019. Pages load slowly or not at all, and if page does load it's blurry. Desktop version has left side 1/4 of the page used as advertising, so font is too tiny to read. To read an article, if it loads, you must click & hold to move the article up, down, left, & right to read. I've tried going to their links for Local News or Living and find dated articles from a few days to a few MONTHS old. Also as far as the notation the "bugs were fixed", the fix changed nothing. I've not received responses to my email contacts, even when I include the capitalized the phrase,"PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE RESPOND. Cancelling my subscription now.

I have been patiently trying to work with the new News and Observer app to understand its features and controls, but have reached a point that it is almost not worth it. I like to read the full page format, but this is now so annoying. Specifically..
-a large advertising bar has significantly reduced readable space
-ads on that bar change every 30 seconds causing a distraction to draw attention
-every time the ad changes, the article text blurs to draw your attention to the ad and you must touchthe text to clear it
-can’t highlight and print an article without going to a crop function which barely works.
This online edition is very inexpensive, but I would rather pay more and get a workable newspaper. My wife has already given up in frustration. It is sad that the only Triangle newspaper is discarding the readers is has left due to very poor app design or more likely an extreme focus on on advertising revenues. Even the online single article format is so interspersed with large flashing advertising that is is not enjoyable to use. Wake up N& O!

Those of us who fully subscribe to the N&O, are typically readers who look for relevant current news and editorials, whether online or in print. We know the feeling of a good read. This digital image of the of the printed paper is handicapped with pop ups, and contrived little nuisances that interrupt the flow of the text. The skeptic in me wonders if there is an attempt to undermine this digital print image, just to make us all give up and read the online live feed version. Please appeal to our intelligence as readers and fix this digital print version so that it is as easy and enjoyable to read as our print copy.

I understand the desire for modernization, but the recent redesign has made this unusable.

Key things to address:
1) Loading speed on first launch - spinner continues for nearly a minute before the articles load.
2) Links from notifications - rarely open anything, and if they do, the often end up at the main page, rather than the intended article.
3) Random app closures - Often I click on TheRaleighNewsObserver , it struggles to load any content and then shuts down
4) Overall UI - There are redundant categories (like “State Politics” and “Under the Dome”). Adding in the large tiles makes it difficult to scan the news for top headlines. Even though it seems visually appealing, you’ve made it more difficult and needing more clicks to get to the articles I want to see. It orders them by section, so I’m always seeing the same sections at the top, even when there is no new content available.

Please bring the old design back or do some production level usability testing to repair this.

A couple of the reviewers gave TheRaleighNewsObserver five stars, then said it was a terrible app, which it is! They apparently don’t know that five stars means good. For a communications company to have an app that works as poorly as this one is a disgrace! In addition to reading the news, I like to do the word jumble and read the advice columns. To find them I had to scroll through to the obit section - they’re buried there. Each page loads with a blurry image, then eventually comes into focus. Google ads pop up constantly, which makes the rest of the text jump around. Very annoying!! And, at $106+ per year for the subscription, if there were another local news subscription available, I would cancel the N&O.

This new link is substantially inferior to the previous link that ceased to function on September 30, 2019. One has to log in each time rather than remaining logged in when app is closed. TheRaleighNewsObserver no longer links to the page for a continued story. Readers must scroll all the way to the page and then back to the original page. Readers have to scroll page to page because the next page arrow function has been removed. As a result, the product is less like an actual paper than the old app. I fear that publishers have added one more nail to the coffin of a once proud newspaper.

This update is a step backwards. I prefer the full page view and being directed to a poorly functional web page is a very big step backwards. Scrolling and zooming are work poorly. You need to do that because a significant portion of the top and bottom of the page a lost to header and/or adds. N&O is one of three newspapers I read. The others are smooth. The N&O web page is a frustration. It was not this way before the update. So why do I prefer the e edition. Because I feel that the news is less cherry picked and I all.

New low on the e edition today. The add at the bottom of the page was taller and so the bottom of the comics page could not be read. Please fix this mess.

I read the paper in TheRaleighNewsObserver just like a newspaper, but do not download it. I just go page by page, and it’s good. Except for one thing: while engrossed in reading, if I accidentally brush my iPad or touch it in ANY way, TheRaleighNewsObserver brings up “Close story,” so I have to click on it to return to where I was reading. VERY ANNOYING. Breaks my train of thought. And don’t tell me to read in the “download version,” please. I like pretending that I am still reading a REAL newspaper and not staring at a screen.

Thank you for listening.

TheRaleighNewsObserver has a lot of the same stories repeated over and over in different sections. If it’s going to rain tomorrow, you’ll see the same rain story in Latest News, Weather, Traffic, and probably Sports.
And speaking of weather, telling me “flooding gets worse after hurricane” a month after the hurricane really isn’t news by that point, is it?
I guess it’s copy and paste for McClatchy. I guess it’s copy and paste for McClatchy. I guess it’s copy and paste for McClatchy.

The previous app simply gave an electronic replica of the newspaper. It was essentially the same as reading the actual paper version. This new app has not been designed with such subscriber readability in mind. Instead of improving TheRaleighNewsObserver , the new version is confusing and cumbersome to use. It appears that computer geeks have designed it and N&O newspaper people haven’t applied common sense as to the electronic version being usable by the subscribing public.

We’ve been long time subscribers to the N&O. Over the years we moved from the print edition to digital. I used the previous N&O e-edition App on iPad in Replica mode until this week. With the change of web address to access the e-edition the old App can no longer access the daily news. This newer App does not support Replica mode. It opens a browser link for this. This is something I could do without TheRaleighNewsObserver . For those of us who prefer to read the digital paper in replica mode the new App provides no real value. Please consider adding this functionality.

I have not been able to access content since latest update. Have cleared data as well as reloaded app and still get error message.

Received response from developer for a work around— I erased TheRaleighNewsObserver so have not tried the solution but appreciate the response.

“There is an issue where Private Relay is affecting the news feed, which we are working to resolve. Go to Settings and disable Private Relay, and the news feed should reappear."

The new version of TheRaleighNewsObserver came out three months ago, and it still doesn’t work. Tapping through from a notification to a story doesn’t work reliably, and even if it does, it takes forever. I’ve talked to support and followed their instructions through three or four rounds of emails only to be told what I already know: there are big bugs in this version, so wait. This version was not ready for prime time, and yet we keep getting told to wait for the next version, which doesn’t seem to be coming. Time to get it together, N&O!

This update is exactly what I was looking for! The layout is beautiful now and the e-edition is now a joy to use. I love the fact that you can choose a default view and follow topics of interest. The old version of TheRaleighNewsObserver was absolutely terrible and I barely used it; however, with this new design I’ll use it a lot more. This update knocks it out the park! Well done.

“Breaking News” has a freakishly huge definition nowadays, and TheRaleighNewsObserver and its push notification has managed to expand it even more. I understand there’s a toggle option to turn off push notifications entirely, but I still want to be aware of local “Breaking News” (the narrower version). Maybe a great solution would an option to select specific notification topics within TheRaleighNewsObserver (Ex: the option to turn off the three notifications that UNC men’s basketball beat Pitt... huzzah?!).

TheRaleighNewsObserver frequently freezes. When you try to zoom in or enlarge a page, it cuts off half to three quarters of the page. App is frequently behind, you would think a daily paper would have the right day, but often at 7am, it is still yesterday’s paper.
The owners of the News and Observer have already run a lot of old readers off by making the physical daily paper to expensive- they try to make you use the digital forum- but unfortunately- they have provided a horrible, non user friendly app. Maybe it is just the iPhone it doesn’t work on, can’t find TheRaleighNewsObserver on a Kindle device.

Lacks some features that I would typically expect. For example it makes me enter my iTunes password every single time I open it — why won’t it keep me logged in, or use FaceID? The annoyance of typing in my password every time I open TheRaleighNewsObserver has caused me to use TheRaleighNewsObserver far less than I had expected to use it.

It also doesn’t allow much control for notifications; you can either have it push (via pop-up and email) every single “breaking news” item or it will send nothing. There seems to be about a dozen “breaking news” items each day, which is way more emails than I want to receive. I’d like to customize my notifications to only send me pop up banners (no email) and only for topics or sections of the paper I’m interested in.