The Mercury News Reviews

I am a long-time subscriber, reader, and fan of the Mercury News e-edition and used to look forward to reading it every morning on my iPad. Not any more. The new version is harder to use from a UI perspective, and it also takes away from the "reading my newspaper on my iPad" experience. A few things that I noticed almost immediately since updating it today:
The use of screen real-estate is highly inefficient. There are huge white spaces, that take up nearly 50% of the screen, to the left and right of the paper. And, there are now ads that take over the bottom 15% of my screen. This isn't what the old version used to have.
Since the entire paper is displayed on your screen all at once, it's hard to read anything easily without zooming in (and this contributes to the white space problem), which is really hard to do. What's harder is zooming out, if I do decide to zoom in.
The "look and feel" of the paper is gone, replaced by a generic white space. I can't just swipe from page to page or scroll up and down anymore.
In the old version, my paper would automatically download in the morning. Now I have to tell TheMercuryNews to download it.
As it stands right now, I find the new version cumbersome and much harder to use. At the very least, I would appreciate it if you could make it so that the older version is available, since I find the new version much harder to read, let alone enjoy.

I’ve waited to write a review because I thought maybe I just need to get used to new interface. Not the case. Navigation in the new app is terrible because clicking on the “continued on page x” text doesn’t do anything, and clicking on the article completely changes the format. Navigating between sections is also more difficult, as is sizing and moving the window. Last but not least, today I’m being shown the Redlands Daily Facts for no apparent reason, and I can’t find a way to get back to the Mercury. I’ve subscribed to the Mercury for 35 years and have become more reliant on the electronic version as the hard copy has been delivered later and later every morning. I’ve even defended the Mercury to friends and neighbors as the newsroom has been gutted and content has shrunk, but that’s a hard case to make these days. This latest update just adds insult to injury.

I have been a subscriber to the Mercury for decades but the paper keeps getting smaller and most of the stories are from the Washington Post and AP, they have few reporters of their own anymore. TheMercuryNews is the worst piece of crap ever. You will constantly have to give your user name and password because it forgets it almost daily. Further you have to keep zooming in and out to read any article on you iPad or phone. If you double click on a story to get just the text version if you read to the end you will have to scroll all the way to the top to close it. It basically makes reading so frustrating you wind up just closing it and going to another news source. The Wall Street Journal is a much better app. I am probably going to dump my print subscription soon as I can get almost everything they print from other sources at a better price.

While the new version of TheMercuryNews looks more modern visually, some major functionality was removed making it a big step backwards
There used to be two read modes, and now there is only one- and you kept the worse of the two.
- I can no longer choose a mode where clicking “read more” just takes me to the page in newspaper view where the rest of the article is, instead “read more” just opens up a different article view, from the start of the article , meaning I have to find where I was in the article (I usually don’t finish the article)
- the view you get from clicking read more is a super weird format- tiny font in massive double space with no white margin in the side (look at NYTimes app for a reasonable iPad reading experience) I much preferred the newspaper view but you made it so much harder to use
- TheMercuryNews no longer handles iPad rotation well, it used to keep me on the same page if I flipped to landscape mode, now it takes me to a totally new section which is very annoying
I would love to revert to old version of TheMercuryNews if possible. I have read so much less mercury news simply this update and that makes me so sad- I want to read more local news generally

I’ve been reading the e-version of the Mercury News for years and while the old app wasn’t perfect, this new one is terrible. It is WAY too small to read, the old version had the paper fill the screen, now the white space around the paper is bigger than the paper itself. One tap to load a full article doesn’t always work, if you don’t want to load the whole thing, there are no longer links to the rest of the article on another page, when you hit next you go to another section, not the next article on the page. If I turn my iPad horizontal to read the comics, it jumps ahead 2 or 3 sections (to the end of the sports section or the business section) instead of staying on the same page. Please fix it soon!

The new and improved version is a mess. Today’s 7/2/22 edition won’t bring up any articles and, even worse, hangs TheMercuryNews up when you try to the point where you have to force close it to continue.

In addition, the new version is missing the full page fit to screen feature. Instead we’re forced to see the full page with 3/4” white margins basically making it impossible to read without manual expanding which with today’s 7/2/22 edition is especially tricky since any mis-touch tries to being up the article which hangs TheMercuryNews .

There’s an old saying in software, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. The fit to screen feature wasn’t broke!!!

TheMercuryNews can’t read the paper half of the days. Some days it crashes when reaching a page part way in. Today, it shows the first page then crashes after a few seconds.

But why would you want to read the Mecury-News anyway? The content has been declining rapidly. It used to be the local paper for San Jose, America’s tenth largest city and won Pulitzer prizes. Now it runs one or two articles about San Jose a day but is otherwise stories from North Bay places that are at least an hour’s drive away. Someone in San Jose couldn’t care in the least about a city council meeting in Richmond. The rest is wire service filler about events I read about on the web 36 hours before.

Don’t download the new version! It won’t take long for you to miss the old one.
I admit that I have not used the new version very much but at first reading I miss the old one. I like to look at an entire spread on my iPad and select articles that I want to read. The new one will display an entire page if I hold it vertically, but with my keyboard in place, it is horizontal. I’ve tried shrinking the image and looked for preferences to fix this problem. Can’t find anything and should not have to be looking so hard to get something that is at least as readable as the old version. And the pop up ad at the bottom of the screen? Get rid of it!

Overall the user experience of the new app, particularly the launch of TheMercuryNews , is more polished than the old app, but it is missing a few options that the previous version had.=========

I view TheMercuryNews on an ipad mini. The old app allowed me to expand the content so that the text was bigger and it was much easier to read while being able to quickly go from page to page. While in this zoomed-in state, with the older version, I could scroll down or advance to the next page. I cannot do this on the new app, and the text appears very small now. If I zoom in on the page I have to zoom out so that I can go to the next page. The is very awkward (having to zoom in, and then out on every page), so I just live with the tiny font. This is significant and is the main reason I rated TheMercuryNews so low.
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Navigating to other section of the paper is harder to do.

I really like having an online version of the daily newspaper but the new app is constantly over reacting to my touch as I move the page, scroll or zoom in. When a new view opens it’s blank so it’s not like the old app that showed the article, instead I have to back out to get back to where I was. Often moving to the next page is difficult without getting that blank image.
This is the only option so I will continue to use it but I hope that it will become easier to use.

I need TheMercuryNews to read my local paper, but it is always a struggle. The view often gets messed up requiring me to navigate back to where I was.

The obituaries often have less appropriate ads pop up. These folks paid to have their loved ones memorialized, do you really need to put tacky ads embedded too?

Lastly, why isn't there a search function? If someone alerts me to something in the paper, why can't I just go directly to the article? This should work historically too. I should be able to find all the articles about a subject over some time span.

Besides now having ads on an app where I pay user fee’s, the readability is severely limited. The pages start in a era condensed full view and the double click to expand it to fill the page is gone. Now you have to use your thumbs to expand and move the paper all over the page. For those who like to read the entire paper it isn’t easy. I’m in the tech software business and this was a definite step back for the user interface. Most likely will result in moving to another news source since there is little local reporting.

I’ve used TheMercuryNews for several years now. It replaced my printed paper years ago, yet has the same look. Very convenient while commuting on the train, or to read at home. Like that I can download, then read offline. Can quickly get to the areas of interest. The Merc is a good mix of national, world, and local news. My only complaint is that the latest version sometimes says I’m not reading the latest version of the paper, when I already am.

I subscribed bc a few times a week I’d find myself following links to local news from Mercury News. Quality reporting costs money - the news we get is only as good as the reporters and editors and staff we fund. Although slow to respond, it feels like Mercury News has a reasonable solution to the public’s loss of appetite for a paid paper newspaper. Thank you Mercury!

It is great to get up in the morning, make coffee and settle down with the “paper” without having to get in the car and drive down our rural driveway to get it - and finding it hadn’t been delivered yet.

It is also easier to share articles of interest with others. It is harder to read on a phone, but works fine on a tablet. However, I do miss having newspaper around for packing and messy stuff.

They’ve done a stellar job designing an app to give you the look, feel, and attributes of reading a physical paper. You can enlarge the photos, and turn the pages just like always. Several days, (editions) of the paper can be stored and retrieved for later viewing. This is truly a portable format and I can still enjoy and appreciate the layout and sections as I always have. I was a hard sell to convert from the print edition to digital but the design of TheMercuryNews makes it a seamless transition.

I read the e version of the Mercury News daily. I can count on it being “delivered” on time and early enough for me to start my day. My focus is national news, local news, the editorial pages and local sports news. It’s like an old friend that I know well and I can easily locate the specific kinds of information that I find essential to be “in the know.” I read other national newspapers too, but it’s only the Mercury that brings me the pulse of my community. I highly recommend it.

Giving credit where credit is due, the vastly revised new version released today is a beautiful product. Appearance on my iPad is orders of magnitude better than the old version, and I can get what I need very quickly. Sure, they have made cuts, but this is a still a great paper. To the complaints about the Merc printing articles from the Washington Post and New York Times, I note the same issue, only as a complement. These papers have some of the best reporters, syndicated into papers everywhere. Nothing wrong with that. Thank you San Jose Mercury for this wonderful update. I would ignore reviews based on earlier versions, they are no longer relevant after today’s major update. My favorite columnist is Sal Pizarro. One thing I wish they would do is add automation to the crossword puzzles.

In contrast to the slick verticals scroll news sites this is just like the physical paper. I read on an iPad mini and zoom the article, touch the colored “go-to” to continue to another page. Touch again to return to the page I came from. To correct a previous reviewer, you can download for offline reading, which I use on the airplane. There is an options setting. 30 days of back newspapers are available. Yes, downloading issues will take up room. Previous reviewer who was critical of APPs data use might have a 16g tablet/phone. I have no problems on a 64gb device with MANY apps and a very active email inbox.

It’s so nice to have my fav newspaper from home in CA available where I’ve moved to even though it’s out of state from CA. All my fav articles n columnists I still get to read every day just as I did when living in CA. I still have relatives and friends living in CA where I used to live, so I like to keep up with what’s happening where they are and where I used to live for so many years. Hooray for technology!
E.McG