Eleven days ago, Apple unveiled its premium news subscription service, Apple News Plus. And as I wrote at the time, it was kind of disappointing. Apple News Plus is based on Texture, a “Netflix-for-magazines” app built by the magazine industry — and thus structured to favor the default atomic unit of the magazine business, the individual issue. That’s fine, on a big-enough screen and when limited to the digital-magazine universe. But no one other than the magazine industry wants to be limited to the digital-magazine universe.
Apple bought Texture a full year ago, which meant its engineers and designers had a full year to figure out how to fit, say, individual articles from digital-native and newspaper news sources in amongst the newsstand-ready PDFs. At least in 1.0, they haven’t pulled it off.
Apple working on a subscription news bundle is a very big deal. Big q is whether it'll be just the magazine bundle that @texture was or something bigger/newsier. And if bigger, how do they manage pricing tiers? https://t.co/H7PSK5UMvJ
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 17, 2018
I think we need to get more comfortable with the fact that the paid Apple News reveal next week is going to be super disappointing. The more we learn about it, the more it looks like a thin revision of Texture. https://t.co/MdS63ItDUU
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) March 19, 2019
Apple News Plus launched with two U.S. newspapers (The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times) and a handful of digital news sites (including The Skimm, TechCrunch, and verticals from New York magazine). They’re shoehorned in oddly: With a few exceptions they don’t appear inside “Apple News Plus” at all, but rather back in Apple News proper (Apple News Minus?), which is built around articles. But they’re not easy to find and they’re not labeled to distinguish themselves from the free content you’re not paying 10 bucks a month for.
Yesterday, I got frustrated enough trying to find one of those digital news product — “The Highlight” by Vox — that I was driven to tweetstorm.
I like Vox! It’s a smart site with smart ideas about editorial strategy. So when I heard a new product from them, “The Highlight by Vox,” would be included in Apple News+, I was interested! But then I tried to find it, and that was my big mistake.
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
So first I go to the News+ tab in Apple News. There’s a catalog of all News+’s offerings there. Is it under “H”? No. (Lots of Highlights for kids, though.) Under “V”? No. “News & Politics”? No. pic.twitter.com/NNrV7gKfG5
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
Maybe I should just scroll through the long News+ feed. I spy the @WSJ, also part of News+, but I go from top to bottom — no Vox of Highlight.
The main News tab maybe? Nope. pic.twitter.com/gPYzKghWRY
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
I figured I’d search for it. There’s…no search field in the News+ tab. And none in the main News tab. Ah, but there’s on in Following?
But there’s nothing for The Highlight, and searching for Vox only shows its main UN-PREMIUM page. Egads, must I live among the commoners? Ugh. pic.twitter.com/Vy3aiJeKt2
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
On the main Vox page, I scroll through all the verticals in the little carousel up top — no The Highlight.
I scroll through all the stories from the past couple weeks, hoping something would be flagged as ~PREMIUM~. No dice. pic.twitter.com/gXGEXhE3P2
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
I decide to take to Twitter. A first search seems to indicate no one has talked about the damned thing in a week.
But then I see it! A tweet from Vox writer @constancegrady linking to an Apple News URL. FINALLY!
I tap it, it opens a webview, throws up a modal, and BOOM I’m in. pic.twitter.com/IXpbC1VQgd
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
I wrote about the evolution of the word "wholesome," purity culture, toxic internet harassment, and cute puppies for Vox's new Highlight vertical! https://t.co/4iQhTgg43y
— Constance Grady (@constancegrady) April 4, 2019
I see a story! It looks good!
I see a The Highlight logo mid-article and think it might lead me to the mothership. Alas, it’s just an image.
I tap on @constancegrady’s byline hopefully too. But it goes to her web author page, which doesn’t list the story I’m on. pic.twitter.com/ip3tktXqqV
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
But wait! If I scroll down to the end of the story, I see three other Vox stories recommended — and two of them are marked “SUBSCRIPTION”! Eureka! I tap on the first one. pic.twitter.com/4umCtNV8bs
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
Oops. pic.twitter.com/qsN6QEnYoq
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
I tap on the second one, and it opens! But — and I cast no aspersions on author @atrupar here — it doesn’t seem all that…premium? It’s the sort of look-at-this-dumb-video aggregation piece you can find easily on Vox and pretty much everywhere else webby. pic.twitter.com/KFqcOvnv9M
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
And indeed, it’s just a regular ol’ web story, free on the web, somehow mislabeled as subscriber-only. https://t.co/IghJcMUG7U pic.twitter.com/s0NjmTbdIx
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
I go back to the main Vox page and…holy moly there’s @constancegrady’s story again. Just sitting there! Unmarked as premium!
Is it possible I’ve been having ~premium experiences~ my entire life and JUST NOT KNOWN ABOUT IT?? pic.twitter.com/78Xt48xQ81
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
I looked back at @constancegrady’s tweet — she, my unknowing Virgil through these circles of Apple News+ — and I see her reply for the first time. It’ll all be free in a week anyway.
Oh well. pic.twitter.com/XomaUvT0XT
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 4, 2019
Currently this link only works on phones or tablets, and it will take you to Apple New plus, which is behind a paywall. (First month's subscription is free.) But the piece will go up on Vox's main site in one week, and as always, that will be free to read.
— Constance Grady (@constancegrady) April 4, 2019
For the record, the lion’s share of the blame here goes to Apple, not Vox. (Versions of the same problems exist for all the other non-magazines in Plus.) Apple had a year to figure this out and they didn’t. (They also had a year to negotiate deals with publishers, but by all accounts, things were being thrown together at the last minute.) From working with Apple News’ backend in the past, I think Vox could take one valuable step on its own, putting all The Highlight’s content into a separate section. But that would still leave most of the UX contradictions in place.
In all honesty, after I sent out that thread yesterday, I fully expected I’d have to add one more tweet at the end: Duh, you can actually find all of The Highlight’s content by doing XYZ, don’t know how I missed it, thanks to @randomvoxemployee for pointing it out. But the only messages I got from @randomvoxemployees were frustrated DMs from staffers who’d like to be able to find their premium content, too. Maybe it was all a dream…
