Daniel Ionescu

It finally here: the Guardian has launched its long-overdue iPhone app (iTunes link). As expected, it’s not free, but it’s not cheap either — £2.39 ($3.88). To put into perspective, CNN’s iPhone app is $1.99 (unavailable in the UK) and the New York Times’ app is free.

I had a quick wander through the app, and I was quite impressed: it single-handedly puts to shame the counterparts from the Independent or Telegraph — though credit goes to the latter two for putting their apps out there months before the Guardian.

The Guardian app keeps the same graphic identity with the website, including colour codes and I like how you can customise the front page (similar to Thomson Reuters’ News Pro app). You can choose which categories and how many items from each category appear on the home tab, and the image gallery section is quite sleek. You can also easily browse through articles by the same author and through tags (keywords) at the end of articles.

There are a few issues with the Guardian iPhone app though. I find the trending tab on the home page a bit confusing, and the podcast integration is nice, but when you actually listen to the file, there is no cover art. The most notable downside is the lack of landscape reading mode (they could learn a lesson from the Financial Times’ app here). Also, the only way I got around for updating the content was to close and reopen the app .

Overall though, I’m impressed with the Guardian iPhone app, especially as this the the first version. The lack of advertising is welcome, but you pay a premium for that. Perhaps there should be a free, ad-supported version alongside. Landscape reading should be a must for the next update.

If you’re not willing to pay £2.39 for the Guardian iPhone app, you can still read all the content for free from Safari.

– Later edit: I used the app a bit more and I also noticed the lack of video content and comment facilities. And here’s a little video from the Guardian introducing their app (the voice over in the video sounds like the Guardian’s Head of Audio, Matt Wells).

While researching for my dissertation, I stumbled across this great analysis. Below is an excerpt.

“Most managers in the [newspaper] industry have reacted to the collapse of their business model with a spiral of budget cuts, bureau closings, buyouts, layoffs, and reductions in page size and column inches. Since 1990, a quarter of all American newspaper jobs have disappeared.

The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies’ solution to their problem was to make “our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.” That may help explain why the dwindling number of Americans who buy and read a daily paper are spending less time with it; the average is down to less than fifteen hours a month.

Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.”

Out of print — Eric Alterman | The New Yorker

Later edit – another quote from the same article from Arianna Huffington:

“Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn’t the enemy. In fact, it’s the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it.”

My site was down for a few days now. Apparently my hosting company updated their PHP and some plugin clashed.

Fortunately, it’s back up now, so I will update with my latest stuff in due course.