It seems mobile news iphone apps have a little way to go before they can claim to be an alternative to traditional papers. Take the ITN News app. It caches immediately giving you a full set of brief stories to read on the go. So for the London commuter it’s a great option. Get onto the tube platform – download the latest news onto your reader in about 2 seconds – really – and thumb through the top stories in full as you shoot underground into town. No need to pick up a free sheet as you’ll get better reporting on your handset and no need to litter the tube. Great eh? Sadly not. The problem is the quality of the content – which I find hard to fathom from a quality news provider like ITN. Today’s top story sees William Hague credited as Foreign Secretary. The grammar is really poor too. A quick glance through the other top stories reveals several basic grammatical mistakes.
ITN should stop leaving the copy writing to the work experience person and take mobile media a bit more seriously. If only they could match their functionality with the content of – say The Telegraph’s excellent quality mobile service.

Now that would be a news app worth reading.