Austin Statesman eEdition Reviews

We live in a tech town - please hire someone who can design a decent app. Just when you figure out how to make things work, they change again. The new app that debuted in the spring was an improvement, you could simply tap the “Fit” button and then move around the page. After only a month that option has disappeared.

In addition, when my daily email arrives, I can no longer simply tap on the edition. I have to sign into my account each day. I am SO frustrated that I’m ready to cancel my subscription! Please stop trying to reinvent the wheel and simply talk to other better newspapers and learn what they’re doing right.

Ugh. The flashing ad at the bottom is fiercely annoying. We pay enough for this paper to enjoy an ad-free app. The ad and extra navigation tools take up screen space in the new app and the iPad browser edition. I will most likely cancel the subscription since the reading experience is so unpleasant. The Statesman just can’t seem to get the browser or app versions correct. I have subscribed in print and online for years and continue to be disappointed. Statesman: Take your cue from Washington Post and NYT apps.

The new version as of Feb. 2020 is another epic fail. The Statesman just can’t seem to get it right. The page forward arrow is too close to the search button. The pages constantly refresh. Double pages are too small to read. Choosing the fit to screen option to read one page at a time won’t set permanently. You have to choose it every day. At least the extra ad overlay is not as conspicuous. And don’t get me started on the browser version. Completely unusable. Ugh.

Living in Austin, a city known for creating great apps and software, it’s embarrassing that our local paper has so completely failed in AustinStatesmaneEdition. I regret even purchasing a subscription after a few painful weeks of using AustinStatesmaneEdition. They seem to be stuck in this world of thinking that trying to mimic an actual paper newspaper experience is something desirable. It isn’t. Even when you use the HTML5 version it’s just awful. Formatting issues, taxonomy issues, constantly having to zoom and pan your screen from one article to the next. It’s terrible. When comparing to things like Apple News this thing feels like it was designed in the 1990s. I so wanted a decent source of local news and I am completely disappointed in the Austin American Statesman’s failed execution and delivery of that. AustinStatesmaneEdition can’t be saved. They should re-factor the entire thing. Hopefully with new tech and UX leadership before they embark on that.

I use an iPad. This new ePaper version is inconsistent. Today, the text is partially blurred in the midst of some articles, fine in other parts. Regardless if I zoom in or out, it remains blurry.
Prior to this, the paper wouldn’t load properly, and threw me into a demo page where it asked me to login every time. I had to delete AustinStatesmaneEdition and then reinstalled it a couple of times. Finally, it worked.
I preferred the version before this new one. At least it was consistent and I was just able to read the paper reliably.
Really irritating.

We went paperless for two reasons: rates were cheaper and we felt it was the best decision with respect for the environment. Shortly after going paperless, I found AustinStatesmaneEdition nonfunctional. I couldn’t login. After spending the obligatory extended wait time to eventually speak to someone, the Statesman person explained the work around solution. Recently, it happened again. In both cases, neither time were we notified via email of the problem or how to deal with it. AustinStatesmaneEdition itself seems to work satisfactorily, it’s the Statesman organization that has been the problem. Come on Statesman, get your act together.

oVery convenient and speedy way to open my digital paper on most days. But several times including today after reading a few articles I will move to a new article and within half a moment the paper closes down. I repeatedly reopen and again it happens. So I move to NYT. Returning after that AustinStatesmaneEdition still does the same thing. Once by closing my iPad and reopening it worked. Hoping for the same today! Solar Bliss

I have given the the paper sited in this title a less than perfect rating. The writers and columnists for this paper are excellent - I have nothing but praise for the quality of their news coverage. I look forward each day to the news coverage, the opinion page and the work of columnists like Ken Herman, Addie Broyles, and Matt Oldham just to name a few! However! The department that deals with subscription services and problems is a whole ‘nother’ deal!!! For some reason, I have never been told why, my electronic paper was not delivered. My husband’s continued to arrive like clockwork. I pursued the problem for SIX WEEKS and followed EVERY thread of resolution of this situation offered. It literally required SIX weeks of DAILY work to resolve this problem. Apparently the corporation that owns this paper cares little about keeping the newspaper business alive and well. I continue to read and hear that newspapers are a thing of the past and if the customer service I experienced is any example we are just waiting for the funeral. Excellent newspapers also require at least minimally good customer service.

Earlier the Austin American Statesmen app had a few issues, one of those being you could not print the crossword puzzles from an iPhone or iPad. I had to use my laptop PC to print the puzzles. That has been resolved and now I can print the crosswords from any of my digital devices. Thank you for that fix.
I enjoy reading the paper online thru AustinStatesmaneEdition . I find it easy to navigate plus you have access to previous editions. In many ways this is superior to the paper version...but I still very much look forward to my print edition on Sundays when I can feel and even smell the paper. Thanks for improving AustinStatesmaneEdition .
-Doug

I like it - its easier to see you options than the old app. The selected article is nicer than in the previous app. I wish you could enlarge the pictures in the selected article and I also wish that you could get the whole article on one click rather than have to call up the continuations (on other pages) of an article. But those are nits and many times I only want to see the first page of the articl anyway. Also why is the widow for entering a search word so teeny tiny?

Screen is a little too sensitive to the touch and I seem to jump left/right when I am trying to go up/down, but the function/features are much better than the old version

Also, when you use the bottom of the screen to “zoom in” on an article, it jumps back to the previous page instead of the one that contained the article.

If they would fix the touch screen sensitivity and it’s jumping left/right when you want to scroll up/down it would be a fantastic app.

Your new app is a big improvement over the previous one—pages fit the screen and are readable, moving page to page is much easier. One possible improvement: when scrolling vertically, AustinStatesmaneEdition is very sensitive to having your finger movement be perfectly vertical. If it is not, it may snap to the next page.

The new AAS app is cumbersome to use on a smartphone and is taking time to get used to, but it’s workable.
Two requests:
1 - I’d like to be able to highlight a word or piece of text to look for more info. I guess it’s disabled because access it’s a paid subscription, but it’s frustrating when almost all other sites on the web allow doing that.
2. - Have the auto reader not time out when my cell phone goes to battery-save mode. I know I can extend the time in Settings but I prefer to keep it short to save battery power.

The Austin Statesman app is easy to use, even for older folks like me who’ve read physical newspapers for years! It’s intuitive design makes it a breeze to flip to any section or page. I’m reading my Austin Statesman on my iPhone mini. With its click to read an article feature, it’s easy to read an article in depth. Possibly my favorite feature of AustinStatesmaneEdition is that when I close a news article close up, I land on the newspaper page where I started (NOT LOST)!

I wish all the online newspapers I read could use an app like the Austin Statesman!

The Statesman app allows me to keep up on local news and events without waiting for my physical paper and/or when I am traveling. AustinStatesmaneEdition is easy to navigate and quite intuitive. While I continue to enjoy reading the hard copy paper the digital version is a wonderful addition.

Excellent app. We no longer have to touch the potentially virus infected news paper. Don’t have to pick it up in our wet yard or miss an edition because the carrier overslept. My wife and I use small IPads so we don’t have wait on each other to finish a section of the paper. No more ink on our hands and on the kitchen table. No more starting and stopping the paper when we used to travel or catch up when we return home. We also read it on our iPhones when traveling.

AustinStatesmaneEdition is awesome. The photos, print, etc are very sharp, easy to navigate, and it’s always on time.

I tried to use the browser on my iPad when the new e-edition came out, but just couldn’t get it to work right for me. It kept jumping to another place if I touched it wrong or wouldn’t stay centered or the right size or in the view I wanted.
But the first time I tried AustinStatesmaneEdition, everything worked great! This is the best digital viewing experience I’ve had since we started reading the Statesman on our tablets.

I enjoy reading the electronic version of the full page layout. There’s nothing that quite replaces the pleasure of seeing rhe layout of the “paper”. I finds AustinStatesmaneEdition easy to use and you can still easily forward articles to friends. I also like how you can access old editions in case there is something you want to go back to. All and all, very happy.

The split screen makes it very easy to navigate with whole articles available without having to bounce around. The selected article appears in the right half of the page in a readable size font. The index is very accessible to assist in navigation. The option to increase the font size on both sides of the page is another improvement. Thanks, Karl Brown

As a longtime a subscriber of the Statesman I grudgingly decided to switch to getting my morning paper delivered via paperless news.
It didn’t take long at all for me to adjust my lifelong habit of enjoying a morning cup of jo and reading the latest news. It was a painless transition that I recommend to anyone still dragging their feet on flipping the switch.
Spend your money instead on good , freshly ground coffee! Have a good day, y’all 😊

Had to cancel our newspaper delivery after 30-40 years. We are now retired on fixed income and paper prices kept rising in order to service. We were advised to check out on line paper. After we learned how to navigate on line paper on our tablet we were so grateful. We now subscribe to just Sunday delivery and read on line the rest of the week. Best of both worlds'. Thank you'

And they said Newspapers were a dying breeed—the Statesman apparently is suicidal

I'm done with the Statesman. Have been a paying customer for the last 5 months and AustinStatesmaneEdition worked pretty well. Then, out of no where, it stopped working. It started to ask or my log in credentials though as soon as I started to enter them, it kicked me out saying I needed to call the Statesman. When I do call the Statesman, which I've now had to do at least 8 times in the last few weeks, most times the people I get to don't know what to do. They eventually get me to someone who does and I'm able to log in at that moment, but the next day, I'm locked out again! Completely useless! Statesman- You're THE paper in a tech town! There are good software developers here. Find them and get this fixed. Let me know when you do and maybe I'll come back.

As many other people have pointed out, AustinStatesmaneEdition is horrible. In addition to the Statesman, I subscribe to several newspapers including the Washington Post, NY Times, and the Guardian. I read them all in digital form. All of the apps work all of the time except the Statesman app. First, it is very, very slow to open. But, you learn to accept this because that is the minor issue. The major issues are that on a fairly regular basis after it opens you can only access issues of the paper that range from 1 day to several days old or you get a message saying the server cannot be found, or it just spins and never opens. if you call the newspaper help line you get told to clear the cache, reset you network settings, delete and reload AustinStatesmaneEdition - in other words, the problem is never that their app is junk. In fact, even if you explain to them that their app is not working on the 2 iPads and the 2 iPhones you have just tested it on, you get told to run the reset, blah, blah "fix" on each device. This has been going on since the very beginning of AustinStatesmaneEdition . I have no idea who Olive software is, but they write crappy apps. Why can't the Statesman just admit this and buy someone else's app? I understand that newspapers are having difficulty finding a profitable business model in the Internet age. Well, here us a hint - a successful path does not involve using such a bad piece of software nor does include not responding to customer complaints about the software.

I want my old epaper!!!!

Terrible, it doesn’t work! Ted Odmark

Used to download and print puzzle and now more difficult and unable . I will be unsubscribing newspaper if not corrected.

I thought the previous version of this reader was bad. This is garbage! Go back or hire a teenager to write a decent reader.

AustinStatesmaneEdition is almost unusable- worse than old one if that’s possible

Please don’t roll out until it’s ready or at least tested once.

If i could give it a zero I would have. This new format and app is terrible! Bring back the previous e-edition.

The new e-paper is impossible to navigate! Get the bugs out before you dump it on your subscribers

As the quality if this newspaper has steadily declined they seem to want to take the ap to a new low level. More pop up ads than ever and very buggy.

I'm a man but I can change, if I have to...I guess. I can deal with the "fuzzy" effect as the pages/articles load, although it is pretty annoying even on a fast broadband connection. I figured the last iteration of AustinStatesmaneEdition wouldn't be free long, but I don't get switching to a new app and beginning charging for it all at once. Although it is a great way to tick a lot of people off and if that's what the publisher was going for it is a huge success.

What is near intolerable is how easy it is to inadvertently skip from one article to another, and how time consuming it is to get back to the paragraph you were reading. Just breath on the screen hard and AustinStatesmaneEdition skips to another article whatever view you are using. And when you try to get back to where you were, it is always to the top of the article and never the paragraph you were on. The old app was less touchy in this way, and would go back to the same spot you were last viewing. I don't think I'm being picky here, it happens way to easily and often. I generally stop reading the paper when my blood pressure spikes to dangerous levels, although I guess that is a great way to wake up quickly in the AM...no more coffee needed for me.

Lucky for the Statesman they are the only local paper or this improvement might have been enough to tank them for good.

I had hopes for AustinStatesmaneEdition when they finally increased the resolution a year or so ago, but apparently that was the extent of their work. Most recent problem with this terrible app is that it now takes a long time to load -- usually more than once because it also frequently crashes.

I complained again to Customer Service which this time sent me instructions about Safari -- not AustinStatesmaneEdition . (They suggested using Chrome, not Safari. Apparently, they can't bother to make the web paper work on multiple browsers.) When I repeated that I was talking about AustinStatesmaneEdition , not using a browser -- no further response on the subject.)

This newspaper has been showing signs of going out of business for a while now -- laying off staff, closing their Austin printing facility. Eventually, they will be internet only, so why won't they at least try to make the apps work? Apparently, they are either too dumb to care or too afraid to spend any money. Cox must be a terrible company to be so short-sighted.

AustinStatesmaneEdition has gotten better. It still had some bad days when it can't find the current paper, or you can't return to AustinStatesmaneEdition 's main screen... but not nearly as often as it used to. I like being able to download for offline use, and also double-tapping a story to bring it up in reader view so you don't have to flip pages for longer articles. All in all, the features are what you'd expect. If not for the occasional implosion, this would be an easy 5-star.

A couple of minor gripes: When sharing to Facebook, it would be nice to share to a person's wall instead of a general post. Also, when emailing a story to someone...could we ditch the pre-printed text "Nice article for you to read: (Headline) check it out." At least get rid of the run-on sentences?

Overall though, it's great to go all-digital delivery and still have the paper laid out the way I'm used to. Keep working on the bug fixes!