Newark Advocate

Review by eFreeware

If you live in or around Newark and want the local paper on your phone, the Newark Advocate app is the most direct route to it. It comes from USA TODAY Co. and gathers community reporting, high school and pro sports, things to do around town, photography and video into one app. That mix is the appeal: one place for the news that concerns your area rather than a generic national feed.

It has been on Google Play since 2012, which makes it one of the older local news apps still being updated, and it sits at a 3.5 average from 113 ratings with more than 10,000 installs. The download is free, and the app carries ads and offers in-app purchases. What you get for that is a mix of free reading and a subscription, which I'll come back to.

The journalism the app is built around

The reporting itself is the core of the offer. The developer describes in-depth journalism across local topics, with things to do around town and sports coverage that runs from high school teams up to the professional leagues. If your interest is chiefly in what is happening in the community, that range covers most of what a local paper traditionally does.

Photography and video sit alongside the written stories rather than being an afterthought. Photos and video are part of the everyday reading experience. For readers who follow local sports or community events, that combination of pictures, clips and reporting is usually what makes a local news app worth keeping installed.

The app is also built to move quickly between those items. The developer calls the reading experience streamlined and fast-loading, with the goal of making stories, photos and videos easy to get to. I'd treat that as the intent rather than a promise, but a local news app lives or dies on how little friction there is between opening it and reading something.

Alerts, saved stories and reading comfort

Notifications are the part most readers end up relying on. You can set alerts for weather, scores and breaking news to suit your interests. That matters for a local app, because the useful alert is the one about a road closure or a school closure nearby, not a national headline you could get anywhere.

There is a set of reading controls that don't get much attention but shape daily use. You can save stories to come back to, change the text size, switch on night mode, and read offline. The offline option is the one I'd single out as the most useful of the reading controls.

The eNewspaper is a separate piece of the app and probably the strongest reason to subscribe. It presents the print edition in a form you can read on a phone or tablet, and access extends beyond Newark to USA TODAY and more than 200 other local eNewspapers. For anyone who reads more than one paper, or who wants the familiar page layout rather than a feed, that bundle is the headline feature.

What the app asks of you

The download costs nothing, and every user can read a sampling of free articles each month. Beyond that sampling, reading runs on a subscription, which is where the in-app purchases come in. The app also carries advertising.

Confirming a purchase charges the subscription to your Google Play account, and it renews automatically every month or year. Canceling means switching off auto-renewal in Google Play at least a day before the period ends. Full details and customer service contact are available in the Subscription Support section of the app's settings.

The other requirement is simply that you care about this area. The app is a local title, and its value rests on Newark coverage and the surrounding community rather than on being a general-purpose news reader. Someone with no connection to the area would have little reason to read it.

Getting the most from it

The sensible approach is to start with the free sampling and see how much of it you actually use. A month of reading tells you whether the local reporting, the sports coverage or the eNewspaper is what pulls you back. If it's the eNewspaper and the wider network of titles, a subscription is easier to justify than if you only ever skim the headlines.

Set the notifications up early and be selective about them. Breaking news, scores and weather alerts are all available and can be tailored, so the useful configuration is the narrow one: the teams you follow and the alerts that affect where you live, rather than everything the newsroom publishes.

Then use the reading controls to fit the app around your day. Save the longer stories for when you have time, turn on night mode for evening reading, and make use of the offline option. Small settings, but they are what separate an app you open once from one you keep.

Finally, note the update history. The most recent release is described only as bug fixes and stability improvements, which is typical housekeeping rather than new features. That is worth knowing if you are deciding whether to update: there is nothing new to learn, just maintenance.

A local paper for people who live there

Go in with clear expectations about cost. It is free to download and there is a monthly sampling of articles, but the app carries ads and the fuller reading experience runs through an auto-renewing subscription billed by Google Play. That is the arrangement, and it is worth understanding before you commit rather than after.

The rating of 3.5 from 113 ratings suggests a mixed reception, and the app's focus on one community is the reason it will not suit everyone. For readers with a real stake in Newark, though, it is the most direct way to keep up with the place, and the eNewspaper bundle gives the subscription more to stand on than local coverage alone.

What's new in version 8.13.2

• This update includes bug fixes and stability improvements.