PressReader: Must App

I've commented before now much I enjoyed the local state paper's app, Arkansas On-Line, for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Thanks to Will Prewitt, the new commissioner of the Great American Conference, for this tip last week. He's using PressReader to subscribe to the key papers he needs to keep up with, and doing so for less overall than buying the papers individually.

The interface is the same ActivePaper that the ADG and others use for their pay websites. Here's where PressReader excels -- you get a whole region plus nationals. For example, in our corner of the country, getting the Tulsa World along with ADG is great. Reconnecting with the Dallas Morning News -- a paper that we took when Gary Blair was still here and that I subscribed to for home mail delivery as far back as my sports editor days at the Ouachita Citizen -- and being able to get other major nationals like WaPost and WaTimes.

And did I mention, it's iSpace and Android?

You get seven free downloads with the app, then it's 99 cents per paper. Or, you can do like Will and get the $29 a month unlimited. That's access to 1700-plus papers around the world. Thanks to his political science background, Prewitt has a link to Canadian politics, so he can read The Globe out of Toronto and keep up with all the ridings.

Now, how long they can keep up the pricing remains to be seen. Think about it in a newsstand price -- at $29 that's only a paper a day. If you're like me, you'd buy two or three going along on a trip. Now you can have them without the travel or the ink stains.

ADDENDUM: After getting it loaded on the iPad, it's obvious -- the ADG's iPad app is a crib off the mothership. And the coverage is much better in our region than originally thought. In fact, if you live in Oklahoma, there isn't hardly a single significant daily not on the system. A ton of Missouri papers also. Yet, not a single Louisiana or Mississippi paper. Hmm.