Wish you were more on top of the news? Or are you a current affairs hound looking for better ways to follow stories? Thanks to the internet, there are more sources of journalism and commentary than ever before. Fortunately, there are also more ways to sort through it! With these apps you'll be able to customise your news intake: broaden your horizons or narrow your feed to what interests you and never miss a story again.
Google News
Available on: Google Play, App Store
The beauty of Google News is in its simplicity. When you log in the first thing you'll see is the top five news stories, tailored to your location and interests. News is pulled from a wide variety of sources – but only credible ones, according to Google. For each story you find you can dive into the article or tap for perspectives and context to get a list of other articles covering the story. To tailor your news feed you can favourite certain topics like "Technology" or "Taylor Swift". You can follow your favourite news sources, whether that's the Adelaide Advertiser or the New York Times or both. And if you want a paid subscription to one or more news outlets, you can organise that right through the app.
Inkl
Available on: Google Play, AppStore
If you love supporting quality journalism but hate navigating subscriptions, paywalls and annoying ads, you might want to check out Inkl. For USD$9.99 per month the Inkl app will give you unlimited, ad-free reading of the news sources curated through its program. Participating sites include The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, Crikey, Financial Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. And if you're willing to pay USD$17.45 you can get the Wall Street Journal and Barrons as well.
The Inkl app organises news from all its sources under browse categories like lead stories, your topics, "Inkl picks" and a whole lot more. If you don't want to sign up for the paid subscription you can browse headlines for free and just pay USD$0.10 per article to read.
Available on: Google Play, App Store
While Google News focuses mainly on current affairs, Flipboard allows you to broaden your intake. You can choose to get the latest Australian and world news but you can also add articles to your feed on personal interests from science to celebrities. Because the app allows you to tick so many interests your news feed can end up being pretty broad, but Flipboard allows you to flip quickly and endlessly through articles until you find one that appeals.
Australia News
Available on: Google Play, App Store
If you only want your news to come from Australian sources this is app could be the one you're looking for. It aggregates articles from a wide range of Australian publications, from big newspapers like The Age, smaller regional publications like The Canberra Times and alternative online sources like Crikey. You can organise by topic including your local state and choose to see either the newest or the biggest stories.
Feedly
Available on: Google Play, App Store
Feedly is a great tool for sorting through the top stories of all the publications you want to follow. You can add news sites, but also online magazines, industry blogs and even YouTube channels. In your daily feed you'll be shown the top stories from each publication. And if you want to broaden your horizons, you can hit the explore feature and browse the top articles from different topics from news to science to fashion, gaming and lots more. Use Feedly to stay on top of the news, your interests and your industry.
Reuters News
Available on: Google Play, App Store
World news hounds who love staying on top of stories as they break might like the Reuters News app. Get top news stories from the world, the UK, markets, science, technology and more. There are also dispatches from Australia, although you can't set the app up to give you an Australian focus. If you follow the markets you can also find stocks, bonds and currencies and set up a company watchlist for stock prices and company news.
NewsPicks
Available on: Google Play, App Store
Want some intelligence behind the design of your news feed? For those who are uncomfortable with an algorithm telling them which stories to pay attention to, there's NewsPicks. News stories are curated by public figures, journalists and industry experts including the likes of Richard Branson, former CNN news anchor Candy Crowley and Global Chief Marketing Officer at Hyatt Maryam Banikarim. You can tailor your feed to show topics that interest you or stories posted by particular people and add your own picks and comments into the mix. NewsPicks promises intelligent discussion with no trolls, although exactly how that's achieved is unclear.
Available on: Google Play, App Store
If your problem is that you have too much to read from too many sources, you might want to try out Pocket. This app, which you can install on your phone or your desktop browser, lets you bookmark articles and videos to read later. Once "pocketed", the article will sync across all your devices so you can dip back in to whatever it was you wanted to read, wherever you are. Pocket provides a beautiful, clean reading experience, unlimited storage, the ability to highlight passages if you want to come back to them and a discovery button in case you haven't bookmarked enough articles to keep you occupied already. You can even get it to read your articles to you with text-to-speech.
Jacqui Dent
Editorial Strategist
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