The Mercury News

Review by eFreeware

The Mercury News is the Android app for the San Jose Mercury News, published by MediaNews Group. It carries reporting across news, technology, sports, business, lifestyle and entertainment, and it is free to download. The reason to consider it over a general news reader is that it is built around one masthead's coverage rather than a feed assembled from many outlets.

What catches my eye is the combination of a personalized topic feed, a saved-article list and a digital replica of the day's paper in the same app. That covers three different reading habits. The games section is an unusual addition for a newspaper app and gives it a second purpose on days when the news is heavy.

Your News puts topic selection first

The feature the developer leads with is a tab called Your News. You select the subjects you actually want to read about, and the app builds recommendations around those choices instead of showing you everything the newsroom publishes. The point is to skip the volume and land on the handful of stories that match your interests.

A related mechanism is following topics. When you are reading an article you can follow its subject, and from then on stories on that subject are weighted more heavily in what you see. Unfollowing works the same way, so the mix can be adjusted as your interests shift.

I like the idea of tuning a single newspaper this way, because a metro daily covers a lot of ground and most readers care about a slice of it. The trade-off is that a personalized feed is only as good as the topics you pick, so it rewards a few minutes of setup rather than a quick install and go.

Saving stories, notifications and the e-edition

Saved Articles lets you set aside pieces for later, whether for a second read or for reference. Push notifications can remind you about items you have saved or point you toward related coverage, which is a reasonable way to keep a reading list from going stale.

Notification topics are selectable, so you decide which subjects are worth an alert. That is a meaningful control for anyone who has grown tired of an app that pings for everything. It is a small feature in theory, but it shapes how the app feels day to day.

For readers who prefer the paper as it was laid out, E-News serves a digital replica of the day's edition inside the app. You reach it through Settings rather than a main tab, so it is a deliberate choice rather than the default view. If your habit is flipping through pages rather than scrolling headlines, this is the part that will matter most to you.

The app also includes games: Sudoku, Solitaire, Jumble, Crossword and Puzzles. I would treat that as a bonus rather than a reason to install, but it does give the app something to do beyond reading, and it fits the puzzle-page tradition of a newspaper.

Moving around the app

A top navigation bar handles section switching, either by tapping or by swiping. Once you are inside a section, a left swipe opens the next article without sending you back to the section list. Both are the kind of small navigation choices that decide whether an app feels quick or tedious over weeks of use.

This version is a faster Android native app with a refreshed look, an author view on articles, and a fix for an intermittent content-loading message. Those are maintenance items rather than headline features, but they suggest the reading experience is being tended to.

What the app asks of you

The download is free, and the app carries advertising. In-app purchases are offered as well. Subscribers can reconnect an existing account with the Restore Subscriptions button in Settings under Subscriptions, and the update notice asks readers to log in again and restore their account so access continues without interruption.

Offline reading is available, and it is switched on from Settings, where the app also lets you adjust offline reading preferences. That is worth turning on before a flight or a long drive, since the setting is not something you would want to remember at the last minute.

One practical note: the current release asks returning readers to sign in again after updating. If you are a subscriber, doing that and then restoring your subscription is the first thing to sort out, because it is the step that keeps your access intact.

How I would set it up

I would start in Your News and pick a small set of topics rather than a broad one. A tight list gives the recommendation engine something clear to work with, and you can widen it later once you see what it surfaces. Following and unfollowing individual topics as you read is the natural way to keep refining that list.

Next I would look at notification topics and trim them to the few subjects I genuinely want alerts about. Between saved articles, reminders and topic alerts, there are several ways for the app to reach you, and it is easier to add notifications later than to tolerate too many from the start.

If you like the printed layout, turn on E-News and get into the habit of checking the replica alongside the feed. And if you travel or read in places without a reliable connection, enable offline reading in Settings first and adjust the offline preferences to suit how much you tend to read in one sitting.

A metro daily in app form

The Mercury News is a focused app: one newspaper's reporting, with tools for filtering it, saving it and reading it in replica or offline form. It is not a general-purpose news aggregator, and it does not try to be. If San Jose and the surrounding area is your patch, that focus is the appeal; if it is not, there is little here for you.

The feature set is broader than I would expect from a single-title news app, and the games give it a lighter side. The personalized feed and the follow option are the parts most likely to decide whether you keep it installed, since they determine how much of the paper you actually see.

The app is free with ads and in-app purchases, and subscribers have an account to restore after updates. At over 50,000 installs it has a modest footprint, and the 2.1 average from 485 ratings suggests readers have not all been won over, so I would go in with measured expectations rather than assuming the polish of a larger platform.

For someone who already reads the Mercury News and wants it on a phone with a saved list and an e-edition, this is a straightforward install. For a reader looking for a broad, multi-source news feed, it is the wrong shape of app.

A reasonable install for Mercury News readers

I would install this if the Mercury News is already part of your routine and you want its coverage organized around your interests, with a saved-article list, an offline option and the day's paper in replica form. The topic feed and follow feature are what make it more than a wrapped website, and the games are a pleasant extra.

The case for it rests on the masthead. If that reporting is what you want, the app gives you several sensible ways to read it, and the settings are worth ten minutes of your time at the outset. If you are after a wide-ranging news reader drawing on many sources, this one is built around a single paper and should be judged that way.

What's new in version 10.0.62

Added new author view to articles Fixed inadvertent "unable to load this content" message