The Mercury News for Mobile Reviews

The latest “update” in early November 2023 renders TheMercuryNews utterly unusable.

Not only does it continually ask me to login to TheMercuryNews I am already logged into it overwhelms the user with ads, pop-ups, and other absolute visual garbage.

I am actually considering canceling my hardcopy subscription to the newspaper because TheMercuryNews shows they care absolutely nothing for the readers of this paper, but only for the advertisers.

I have to preface this review with the fact that I just downloaded TheMercuryNews and was unable to access anything, so knowing I'll figure it out I only currently am giving it 2 stars. Since I know the standards of this paper are high I'm sure it will be going up.
I'd like to say to all of you out there that are complaining about having to pay for a paper, STOP!
My son is a journalist in Philly and I hate to tell you this but he needs to house and clothe himself. You have no idea the sort of work, time and research that goes into every piece.
If you want to read the New York Times online you need to subscribe, the same goes for The Washington Post. The "Newspaper " at the stands is in decline if you haven't heard because of people not wanting to pay for their news. That's fine don't pay for your news, wade through all the good, the bad and the ugly out there on the web if you have the time. I prefer to leave it to a paper I respect and read and have no problems paying for journalists to do their jobs so that I can be better informed.

I’m not even sure what the point of TheMercuryNews is. On the rare occasion I want to read an article, it takes me to the Merc website. I went to settings to see my subscription details, not there. I wanted to check my privacy settings and opt out of selling my email, it’s not in settings. The policy is but no way to actually make changes to opt out. Little image of an icon to click, but where do I go to click on the icon? My biggest concern is on July 15 I called to cancel because my subscription cost greatly outweighs any benefit I get. The person offered me a new cost of $2 for 6 months. Great, I said, I’ll take it…..fast forward to the next month and my card was charged my original monthly price. Now I can’t find how to cancel my subscription in TheMercuryNews . I don’t read it near enough for the price and I definitely don’t want to deal with a company that lies or overcharges just to keep their subscriptions up. With papers struggling I’d expect much better customer service than this.

I'm a fan of the Merc. However, the content needs more stringent editing. Are the articles being edited beyond the perfunctory spellcheck? Just because it's online or on an app doesn't mean their should be any less attention to quality.

There needs to be a Local section. The "California" section is much too broad and is often inundated with sports-related headlines.

The sports stories overwhelm categories beyond the Sports section. They pop up in Breaking News, News, California, and other categories. I love sports, but sports fans go to the Sports section for their info. Only place the more significant Sports stories — postseason, historical performances, controversies — in other categories when necessary. The Giants losing a mundane game is not relevant beyond the Sports section.

I have to use TheMercuryNews because the webpage does not load on any of my mobile devices (despite working last year on the very same devices). NOW TheMercuryNews IS BROKE! Constant crashes. I cannot get out of portrait mode and now I cannot get any of the articles I want to read. Wheres THE DISQUS USER COMMENT SECTION? I SIGNED UP FOR DISQUS TO MAKE MERCURY NEWS COMMENTS. I AM SO TIRED OF AUTOUPDATES AND CHANGES THAT ARE NOT NEEDED. IF ITS NOT BROKE DONT FIX IT!!!!!!!!!!! What I find really hilarious,mis that they put ADS FOR TheMercuryNews MACK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ARTICLE. No separation, no font change so in one sentence I am reading about the 49ers, the next sentence I am reading "Reading this on your Ipad? Try our app!" Totally broke. I literally have no idea what to do now. I cleared memory on my Ipad to have this stupid app. I'm about done with mercury news, been a reader for years. Please get your **** together and rollback versions immediately!

I have tried to use TheMercuryNews for years. I am a subscriber, but there are times when I want a quick look at the news. This is definitely one of the worst apps I have ever used. It jumps around. It flashes. The page moves up and down randomly. Scrolling doesn’t work, then it does, and sometimes it just runs away with the page. Obnoxious flashing ads dominate the pages, and change the size and shape of the text blocks. And never, ever try to use it on a slow wi-fi connection, because all that flashing and jumping uses network bandwidth, so it takes forever for the page to settle down so you might read it. Sorry Mercury news, I switched over to the New York Times mobile app several minutes ago.
I am using an iPad Pro with iOS 11.4. But TheMercuryNews has been this bad for years.

Hi,

Although I had liked using TheMercuryNews to access news (and had purchased a year subscription via Apple), all of a sudden (5 months into the year) I couldn’t access anything and TheMercuryNews redirected me to the San Jose Mercury news website, which said I had to buy a new subscription or link my account. After unsuccessfully attempting to link accounts, I called the newspaper’s customer service line and they said that I don’t have an account and had to purchase a new subscription. Overall, a frustrating experience that is still unresolved, so I’m submitting this review to inform others of this issue.

I have to keep identifying myself as a subscriber to use TheMercuryNews via a long login, which typically does not work. So every time I call the Mercury News for the (or any) problem, the automated system says I do not have an account. I spend 20 minutes on the phone to finally get a rep who spends another 5 minutes finding that I actually do have a subscription to the paper. So this is probably why TheMercuryNews does not work — because the Mercury News is so disorganized that they can’t keep their records straight! As soon as my subscription runs out I am cancelling! Why? — Missed papers, No credit for missed papers, No real customer service that solves problems, Unusable app. Total waste of time!

The only thing new with TheMercuryNews is better use of color. But where did the news go? Apparently if I don't use TheMercuryNews for a few hours the most important stories get replaced with a newer item even if the newer item has much lower news value. Especially true for sports section. I have many other choices of news sites with short news cycles. I want the local news, particularly when I travel and read with morning coffee. So please stop deleting main items before I get to them. The previous incarnation of the MN app did not penalize me in this way

Requires you to pay in order to view any article at all. Deleting it, one of the best sources for local news but that's long gone now.

Updated: finally I can look up articles on TheMercuryNews. They've added advertisements such as "recommended apps" but in reality I don't care; as long as I can read my local news that's all I care about. Hopefully I don't have to sign up for access, I'm fine with these advertisements as Long as I have access to local news. Thanks for fixing that! ( 1 star upgraded to 3 stars )

Shouldn’t have to pay for a digital subscription to read news online, if you have a paper subscription. It should be part of the deal. We pay for a subscription but hardly get it. Tired of always having to call for missing paper. When we do get the paper by time I get up it’s tossed in recycling. No reason for me to get up at 5 am just to read the paper. Especially when we don’t get it until 8. Each day it gets later and later — if/when we do get it. Somehow my work gets free digital subscription. Why not residential customers too?

TheMercuryNews and info in there are total waste of time and money. TheMercuryNews is not stable and closes on its own without notice on tA very frequent pace. I needed to continuous reconnect to TheMercuryNews many times to be able to read an article.
The info provided is not at all balanced and totally lean to the far left and it’s full of bias and lies. The majority of the so called “journalists” do not report the actual news but create the fake news. Really bad newspaper going down to failure as many people are stopping their subscriptions as myself.
I’m not recommending at all to read this trash paper. Not worth your time and money.

Forces you to view only in portrait mode, this version is at least barely usable, which is an improvement over the previous version. Even though I'm a paying subscriber, I'm held hostage to full page ads that have to run their painful course before resuming content I've already paid to see. Someday, someone will come up with a mobile app that is as good as just about any web page you can use to view newspaper content. Until then, we're stuck with crap apps like this.

Way below what you'd expect from the leading daily newspaper in the heart of Silicon Valley. "Top Stories" seems to be a random collection of articles for which I have no interest or input. Even with Location Services enabled, the local news isn't focused (when I'm at home) on our locality, as the paper edition offers.

Due to limited "real estate" mobile apps cannot display as much data as web-based apps. But each section's top stories in TheMercuryNews (local, business, sports), there's a dearth of content. If I compare this to the NY Times mobile app, well, no comparison.

I dunno why TheMercuryNews has such bad reviews, it actually works very well. TheMercuryNews could improve by giving readers the ability to close ads. Aside from that, I think it's a great way to get editorial content from one of my favorite newspapers.

Oh and providing readers w a frys ad could make the mercury money and give us nerdy valley kids some eye candy haha.

Recommended

Used to have no ads but now pop up constantly. Content is crap. "Breaking news" usually six stories about Sharks game, three movie reviews, and other decidedly non-news drivel. Frequently not updated for days. Too many sports recaps used as filler under news sections!! Put sports scores in sports section!!! That's not news!!! Better to randomly guess what you think might be happening in the world and google it or just imagine a story you think is interesting and informative 'cause you won't find it here :-/

I have seen better news apps and I am very sad that the The Mercury News is so hard to navigate. I purchase this because. Lived in San Jose for twenty years and missed the old physical paper.
This could b so much better. If they would just try and see the perspective of a reader, they would totally change TheMercuryNews. I wish I could recommend it to a friend but I cannot in its present state.

The news app generally covers the same articles as the paper. Sports are pretty well covered. I always read the breaking news, which is should just be called 'top stories' because it is still delivered at a paper's pace. Overall, I'm pretty happy to use TheMercuryNews .

Works as expected. There's an ad on it, but it was FREE and I was able to see the entire story without being directed to the website (which shows even more ads).

It's got a semi-cool feature where it will "spreed" (is that supposed to mean speed read?) the articles in a large font. Kind of cool. It would be really cool if it marqueed the text.

Useful ... if you like the merc. Glad it was free, and doesn't make you pay for a subscription like the Bay Area News iPhone app.

Maybe I'll read them more now that they've stopped locking up their content behind subscriptions and walls of ads.

Too frustrating/ difficult to read in the new format for me. Don’t want to wade through the ads and other articles I am not interested in to find the news. I am only interested in the Digital format, but constantly having to scroll the screen to read is a PIA.

I could be enticed to re-subscribing if the format was returned to the old or better reading format…

Accessible all the time. Up to dare news to keep you updated on Bay Area news even when living afar. User friendly

Very nice mobile friendly UI
- but news updates aren't updated over the wknd, as another reader pointed out
- I like the clean organization and an overall fluid design
- for subscribers to the print edition, like me, I'd like to see some perks such as coupons, recipes which I can save to files, local traffic alerts etc.
- kudos on a fine effort so far!

I like to bookmark things I find in the paper, but finding the content on TheMercuryNews is an adventure in using the right keywords in search. Would love to have a better search experience or maybe articles IDs to use in search (can’t believe I’m suggesting this: aol keywords)

The decision to remove landscape orientation (for no apparent reason) was a mistake. Maybe at least tell us why this was necessary? I use Apple’s Magic Keyboard and that works only in landscape orientation. To use the SJMN app now, I have to disconnect from power, hold the tablet in my hands, and do without the keyboard. This is a bummer!

I’m not sure why they removed support for landscape orientation, it ruins the experience when using the iPad Smart Cover as a stand, which only props up the iPad horizontally.

After 50 years in the Bay Area, still my favorite news source.