Free Press News Break app updated, now available for Android By: Paul Samyn Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 29, 2019

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/03/2019 (2353 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Free Press knows a thing or two about redesigning a newspaper. Of course, when you are in your 147th year of publishing one, you’ve had lots of practice rethinking how best to present journalism.

But we aren’t about to let the familiarity we have with print stop us from updating what we do with pixels to better serve our growing digital readership.

Get the News Break app

A lightweight, ad-free selection of the news.

 

And so today, we are proud to announce the launch of News Break 2.0, a significantly updated version of our app that is available for free to all our subscribers at both the Apple Store and Google Play.

The biggest change is that our new and improved News Break is now available to those on Android devices.

When we launched News Break in 2017, we designed it for the largest part of our online audience — those using Apple’s iOS smartphones and tablets. That was not a move that went down well with Android users who have been waiting patiently — and impatiently, in some cases — for us to include them in our app offering.

The welcome to Android users is but a small part of the update to News Break, which won the 2018 INMA Global Media Award for best use of mobile.

You now have a chance to select which topics and writers matter most to you, so you get more of what you want when you want it. If you are a Jets fan, add a Jets section to the app’s front page to easily find the latest news, columns and features about your favourite NHL team. Similarly, if you never want to miss a column from Melissa Martin or Niigaan Sinclair, you can opt to follow their work to make that so.

We’ve added alerts so we can notify you when major news is breaking. There’s now a setting that enhances the experience when you are reading in the dark. Toss in a more modern look, along with the same ad-free experience, and we trust that News Break will be more than worth your time and dime as a Free Press subscriber.

As always, we are standing by to hear from you and, if need be, help you navigate your way on News Break. If you have questions or feedback, feel free to shoot an email to digitalfeedback@winnipegfreepress.com.

In the meantime, I want to thank our readers for the feedback we’ve received and the uptake on our other new app, for the E-Edition, which allows you to easily swipe your way through the digital version of our newspaper. In the week since that app was launched in both the Apple Store and Google Play, we had more than 5,000 downloads. Not surprisingly, we have seen a significant bump in daily traffic from those reading the e-edition.

The lessons we are learning from the redesigns of our digital platforms are as important as the ones we’ve learned over the past century-and-a-half of publishing a newspaper. And hopefully, they will help us secure a future for the Free Press for years to come.

— Paul Samyn is the Free Press editor.

@paulsamyn

-paul.samyn@freepress.mb.ca

Paul Samyn
Editor

Paul Samyn is the editor of the Free Press, a role which has him responsible for all this newsroom produces on all platforms.

A former Free Press paperboy, Paul joined the newsroom in 1988 as a cub reporter before moving up the ranks, including ten years as the Free Press bureau chief in Ottawa. He was named the 15th editor in Free Press history in the summer of 2012.

Paul is the chairman of the National Newspaper Awards, a member of the National NewsMedia Council and also serves on the J.W. Dafoe Foundation, named after the legendary Free Press editor. Read more about Paul.

Paul spearheads the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.