Apple is also making its own daily podcast called Apple News Today. New episodes will drop every weekday, and it won’t be locked behind the Apple News+ subscription. You can listen via Apple Podcasts and the new Audio tab on Apple News. You’ll find the audio stories there as well, along with recommendations and a way to manage your queue. CarPlay now supports Apple News as well, so you can listen to the audio stories and podcast while driving.

Apple

On top of those audio features, Apple is expanding its local news coverage. It has added more major local papers to Apple News, including The Charlotte Observer, the Miami Herald, and Raleigh, North Carolina’s The News & Observer. News+ subscribers in Canada now have access to Le Devoir and The Globe and Mail will hit the service later this summer. Late last month, members lost access to New York Times articles when the newspaper cut ties with Apple News.

Folks in the Bay Area, Houston, Los Angeles and New York now have access to local news collections curated by local Apple News editors, which feature stories and updates from several publishers in each locale. The collections cover a range of topics beyond local news, such as weather, sports and dining, and there’s a personalization element to them. Apple plans to roll out these collections to more cities and regions in the future.

The company says that Apple News now has more than 125 million active users in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. Apple hasn’t revealed how many paying subscribers the service has. It reportedly struggled to attract subscribers at the outset, but the latest feature additions could entice more people to sign up.

Articles from The New York Times will no longer appear in the Apple News app. Today, the NYT announced that it is ending its partnership with Apple News. The issue seems to be that while other services, like Google News, send readers to publishers’ websites, Apple News generally keeps readers in the app. Or, as NYT puts it, Apple’s approach does not align with The Times’ goal of building direct relationships with paying readers.

“Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers, and the nature of our business rules,” Meredith Kopit Levien, The Times’ chief operating officer, wrote in a memo to employees. “Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters.”

On one hand, such a variation clause would be fairly common practice given that no company wants to renegotiate all of its deals to offer a tweaked service. And certainly, bundling News+ with either TV+, Music or both, would make good sense as an extra-value add-on. If a bundle did launch, and it is if, it may offer one, two or all three services with some small reduction in charge compared to buying them all individually.

But Bloomberg points out that the move could anger publishers, who would see their fees cut under any further discount. One outlet is said to receive under $20,000 from News+ subscriptions, less than expected and less than it got from Texture, the app Apple bought to rebrand as News+. Apple’s refusal to allow targeted advertising has meant that some publishers initially eager to sign up are starting to get antsy.

The service will give equal weight to subscription news sites and non-subscription news sites, which was once an issue of contention between News Corps and Google News. Google ended a policy in 2017 that downgraded news articles that were under a paywall in its search rankings. The service will also aim to promote original news reports, rather than rewrites of existing articles. “We are exploring this with the goal of recognizing and rewarding the provenance of journalism, and to drive traffic and data to publishers—including subscription sites—so their original work is respected,” said News Corps spokesperson James Kennedy to WSJ. “We want people to see a wide spectrum of news and views, from local, niche and national sources, without bent or bias.”

Digital platforms like Apple, Facebook and Google have long been accused by some of showing liberal bias in its rankings and other decision-making. The move by News Corp arrives the same week as the release of a nearly year-long conservative bias audit on Facebook. The report stopped short of proving actual bias, but did lead to Facebook altering its advertising policy regarding certain anti-abortion ads.

An early version of Knewz.com is being shown to News Corp executives, and an official launch could come later this year. Given the soiled reputation of existing digital platforms due to claims of bias, it could become a viable alternative for some people.

Unlike when Apple closed Beats Music, there’s currently no support for Android or Windows. You’ll have to pick up an iOS device or Mac if you want to use News+ right now. And simply speaking, the likelihood of a subscriber buying an iPad or Mac just to keep service going is rather slim. Those users are more likely to jump to alternatives like Scribd, even though those services might not offer the same selection as Apple.

It’s an unusual move when Apple is otherwise making its services widely available. Apple Music is available on Android, Windows and even third-party smart speakers, while Apple’s TV app will be available on smart TVs as well as competing media hubs like Fire TV and Roku players. It doesn’t appear that Apple is eager to make News+ ubiquitous, at least not in the short term.

Other outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post are still holding off, according to the sources. Like before, Apple is not only asking for a 50 percent cut but requiring unlimited access. Publishers have supposedly balked at a lack of direct access to customer info like email addresses.

Apple, the WSJ and others have declined to comment.

Whichever publishers are available on March 25th, the business model is likely to remain consistent. Apple would still offer its usual smattering of articles for free in the News app, but paying a monthly fee would open the floodgates. Combined with Apple Music and the forthcoming video service, it would represent the company’s big push into services as its hardware sales slow down.