A News App for Political Junkies The New York...

A News App for Political Junkies

The New York Times is out with a new app for political junkies who need their news fix right now.

What’s particular notable about it is that the Times isn’t limited articles to their own coverage. Indeed, they’re bringing coverage from their biggest competitors.

Via Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab:

For example, the current top story is this one on Democrats seeing the GOP primary as a two-man race. That’s shown as the lead story in a cluster that also includes this Washington Post story, this Business Insider story, and this Washington Examiner story. (Some interesting choices there! I also see links to National Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Talking Points Memo, CNN, and a YouTube video.)

Maybe most interesting of all, one of the current top items in the app isn’t a New York Times story at all. It’s actually a one-sentence summary of a L.A. Times story on Sarah Palin (“Sarah Palin said she would not weigh in early on the G.O.P. race, but she did offer praise for Newt Gingrich and the Trump debate”), on top of a link to the LAT story making that exact point.

The glorified link is given the same weight in the app’s UI as a regular Times story. That feels noteworthy to me — I can’t think of anything else as linkbloggy that the Times has ever done.

The app is free but you need to be a digital subscriber to get the complete content (read: actual New York Times content).

That caveat aside, it’s nice to see that the Times putting readers first.

After all, political news is most valuable when seen in the context of different coverage standing side by side.