Last night I spent a little time downloading iPad news apps.  I already had the New York Times' Editors' Choice app, the Wall Street Journal app, and the USA Today app.  In addition, I also had the first Time Magazine app from the iPad release, 12 April.

News Apps I've Been Using for a While

I've enjoyed Editors' Choice.  It feels a lot like a newspaper, improved.  You can see the headline, possibly a picture, and that all-important first paragraph that you can use to decide if you want to read the rest of the article.  The app is also very respectful of their brand.  Couple that with good, generally in-depth reporting, and the experience has been good.

The USA Today app is very different from Editors' Choice.  It is also very respectful of their existing print brand.  They fit more article lead-ins on the page, but at the cost of not being able to read more than a couple of lines of the intro paragraph.  That means you do a lot more tap-in/back-out type of behavior.  There are also moving elements on the front page.  This allows for a better use of screen real estate, but some might find it distracting.  This app also lets you customize the left bar of the "paper" to include your local weather, your sports teams, etc.

The Wall Street Journal, consistent with Rupert Murdoch's efforts to monetize the news, requires a login before it will show you anything.  As a result, I moved on.

I bought the issue of Time Magazine because I watched the video of the cool interactive things they are planning for Sports Illustrated and some of their other brands.  Unfortunately, this app doesn't implement any of that interactivity.  While it isn't completely linear, it is more like reading individual pages than like interacting with the content.

Being curious and somewhat dissatisfied with the lack of interactivity I'd encountered vs. what we've all seen demo'd, I went to download some new news apps last night.

New News Apps I Decided to Try

I went and downloaded the BBC News app, NPR, News Pro (Thomson Reuters), and News (AP).

The BBC News app takes a different and pretty interesting approach.  The left side of the screen is a collection of thumbnail images and headlines.  The right side, when you tap a thumbnail, becomes the article.  (In portrait orientation, this is an over and under type of display.)  Every article has imagery associated with it and many have video.  The app is also reminiscent of their online brand, but it is also not afraid to go beyond it to embrace the new medium of the iPad.  While the Times' Editors' Choice lets you email an article, BBC News is the first I've seen to include social media.  You can email, share on Facebook, and share on Twitter, articles that you think interesting.  Overall, not a bad effort.

The NPR app is kind of similar to the BBC News app in that it consists of a collection of thumbnails and headlines on scrolling lines.  However, there's some inconsistency in the presentation.  Some of the articles have small images, others large ones.  Some don't have images at all.  The small ones have a short paragraph about the article, the large ones just have the headline.  Some are backed by audio content from NPR's well-known radio programming and have icons to reflect this.  Others do not.  Once you tap through to an article (which replaces the thumbnails view), you can scroll that article vertically or scroll to other articles horizontally.  NPR also allows you to share via Twitter, Facebook, and email.  Also not a bad effort, but a little harder to use than BBC News.

The Thomson Reuters News Pro's first content screen presents only five articles (headlines, 3 short lines of the first paragraph, an optional image, and an indicator of how old the headline is).  There's also a stripe of Top News Video.  Overall, it makes the iPad feel much smaller than it is.  Editors' Choice, for example, gives you a lot more information to digest in deciding which articles to read and generally more articles to choose from per page.  I doubt I will spend much time with News Pro.

Perhaps the most intriguing of the news apps is the Associated Press' News.  Up to now, I've been disappointed with how the news apps were taking advantage of the user interface possibilities of the iPad.  While some present the news better than others, and some are even more interactive than others, none of them really have much visual appeal.  News, on the other hand, tries to take advantage of the features of the iPad.  It uses a lot of animation to make the presentation more engaging.  News presents headlines, an image, and the time the article was posted in a small rectangle.  They are divided into categories and there are customization options, too.  Rather large at the top of the screen are stacks of images and videos.  Unfortunately, the app falls short in some areas, too.  For one, the lack of any summary material leaves you to tap through to an article before you know whether you want to read it or not.  Also, the app doesn't make very efficient use of space, especially when you tap the images and video at the top of the home screen, and sometimes the animations feel like they slow down use of the app.  News also provides social media sharing options.

Conclusion

In short, none of the current crop of news apps really hit the sweet spot that I'm looking for.  In some ways, the AP's News app comes close, with its better use of the medium, but Editors' Choice does a better job of presentation.  What I'd really like to see, I think, is something that uses the medium like News and BBC News, but honors the content better like Editors' Choice.  I do like the integration of NPR's audio and BBC's video.  This is an area where this medium will excel, pulling together the strengths of print and broadcast media into a single device.

These are all first generation efforts.  There are clearly a lot of these types of apps out there.  My hope is that as they compete for users' attention, they will learn from each other strengths and weaknesses and come to better take advantage of the new medium which is the iPad.