by Dan Moren
Apple adds The Athletic to News+, Wirecutter coming soon
Apple and The Athletic today announced that Apple News+ subscribers now have access to The Athletic’s unrivaled sports journalism. The Athletic provides best-in-class team coverage, as well as coverage of the biggest and most compelling stories in sports daily, across the major sports leagues. Additionally, Wirecutter will be available for free to all Apple News users beginning early next year.
Well, this just got interesting. I’ve long thought News+ to be the least compelling of Apple’s services, but adding both The Athletic and The Wirecutter—both top-tier brands owned by The New York Times—definitely makes it more of an appeal to me. Those are both sites that I frequently run into paywall issues (despite my wife having a subscription to the Times that, apparently, does not include either of those sub-sites).
Frankly, adding the Times itself would be even more of a draw, but it’s certainly a possibility that these two brands are being used as a test case to see what how well this works out for the paper. (Presumably Apple is paying well.)
I do think the Apple News app still needs some attention, though. Right now, I still find it a big overwhelming firehose that I have little idea how to tune to my needs, despite the claims that the algorithm selects stories just for me. These days I still use Google News for my basic newsreading, but I’d be happy to dump it for Apple if the experience were to improve a bit.