News Break: Local Stories App : Official Wiki

News Break: Local Stories App

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News Break: Local Stories App is an iPhone and Android News App, made by Particle Media Inc.. Today, it has gone through many interations by the developers - Particle Media Inc., with the latest current version being 8.0.0 which was officially released on 2021-01-23. As a testament to the app's popularity or lack thereof, it has gathered a total of 549,441 Reviews on the Apple App Store alone, with an average user rating of 4.70922 out of a possible 5 stars.

How does it Work?

Local news updates can bring you closer to your community, and we need that now more than ever. Health scares and shutdowns are leaving us separated. Connection is key during these turbulent times. Get ready for your day with an app that delivers local news at scale across the U.S. Receive local headlines, breaking news, and relevant stories that matter to you straight to your phone, with News Break. Be one of the 45M+ locals that trust us to deliver your local news. Now you can get news you care about directly from your home screen with our newly designed, customizable news widget for iOS 14. It's the best news widget that allows you to follow local and national news topics without any hustle. Make your home screen a portal to your local community and the world. Get local news, US news and a personalized selection of news stories that matter to you. Whether you’re interested in celebrity news, political news, business news or any other local news, News Break can help you find it. See all the trending news and get news alerts for what matters to you. Know what’s going on in your local community and around the world. From curated local briefings to hand-picked national/world headlines, emergency alerts to crime stories, News Break is your must-have news app. Local News Highlights • Get a curated daily brief about local news, traffic, events, crime and more. Follow local news, events and activities. • Get local weather reports at a glance. National News • Stay up to date with our coverage around protests and public safety. • Browse national headlines and read comprehensive, in-depth stories. • Use the discovery engine to discover stories from over 10,000 trusted sources, including Fox News, CNN, Business Insider, Newsweek, HuffPost, Reuters, The Associated Press (AP), Bloomberg, Time, and more! Personalized News Feed • Get the stories that matter to you with a highly personalized feed, relevant to your likes and dislikes. • Keep up with celebrity news, business news, sports news and more – whatever you’re interested in! • Our news aggregator collects and delivers the news that matters to you. • Get news alerts customized to your tastes. Your Community News • Find local restaurants, deals, shop openings, and more ahead of time. • Read personal and vivid stories from our local writers and content creators. • Treat us as your personal newsstand, magazine collector, restaurant reviewer, and more. Create Civic Value - Support the Cause • Use News Break to revive the local news ecosystem and support small publishers • Increase local story volume and geographic coverage to stimulate local storytelling and community power Follow or Block the Trend - It’s Up to You • It’s totally cool to stay on top of some topics, or totally hate them! • News Break allows you to follow what is trending, or completely block some topics you don’t appreciate. • You can laugh, share, think, cry, upvote, downvote, comment, reply... • News Break is a free ground that welcomes you to express emotions & opinions. Download News Break today and stay informed on local news! Better informed, better life.

Top Reviews

Ahem, soooo....

By Lady_Cat69

This app is fine I guess.... It customizes your news feed and stuff like that but... it always seems to notify me the most depressing of news even if it doesn’t relate to me. Perhaps there’s a setting I don’t know of but I feel like every 3 hours I’m being notified that someone’s grandma has just been diagnosed with cancer and die and painful horrible death alone... an exaggeration obviously but that’s how it feels. I’ll just be chilling then I get a notification, “Oop-, sos was found murdered. Suspect is orphaned child.” Like, 👀👀👀 Now for the *ahem* part. I believe this app can go toe-to-toe with Twitter on the amount of toxicity found in the comments. I swear, every time I go to a comment section- even on non political news articles- there’s some hate group complaining about something, normally more than one. I don’t think this is something that can be fixed because, freedom of speech, human rights, censorship, blah blah blah whatever. But if you’re sensitive to white supremacist, racists, xenophobia, homophobia, atheist, Islamophobia, proselytizing, *inhale* anti-white, anti-Asian, far lefts, far rights, yada yada yada, ya get the point, you may wanna avoid the comments or idk find another app. 🤷‍♀️ I won’t say that it’s not frustrating. I hate it more than the depressing news every three hours thing.
Overwhelmingly Negative

By devilmaycare210

I downloaded this app almost a year ago. I’ve loved it because it does provide notifications on what’s happening in my local area. However lately with the current COVID-19 crisis, it’s all the app has become about. It’s great for staying up to date on what’s happening with the corona virus, however as someone who struggles with anxiety, I’m disappointed and frustrated that every 3 hours I’m getting a notification for something virus-related. I could understand if it was letting me know about business closures in my area or info on the ever-changing stay-at-home order, but it’s not. For example, the most recent one had to do with the surgeon general predicting a high death toll in the next week and “9/11-like moments.” Last night it was something to do with Trump’s statements about the rising death toll as well. I get that it’s a news app, but it used to give me more info than just the current world crisis. I don’t need to hear about all the bad stuff, I’d love some more wholesome content. However I’ve decided to delete the app as I can’t see that happening anytime soon. Again, great app for staying up to date, but not if you’re already overwhelmed by it all. I’d recommend not downloading until the pandemic starts to clear up. 2 stars would be my current rating, but before all of this I would’ve given it 4.
The Best App Right Now

By Bwezag

Everything about this app has been what I should have expected expect only one tiny thing. I’ve been using this application lately because of Coronavirus news, and to be honest, I don’t complain, but as I just noted earlier, if you guys can just add this one feature, it will be helpful for not only me, but maybe for many others out there. I think you should add a search field especially for countries and/or cities, so people can search for specific locations/country to get the news they want to know first. Many among us are separated from our families. Therefore, for those who are concerned, their first intentions when they open your application, they intend to look for news about the countries where they came from for their loved ones if covid-19 has worsened or not. This is before anything else. But again, I love you your application and I use on daily basis.
Used to get vital info but now....

By JRN0824

I really used to appreciate the NewsBreak notifs because they were new and informative. In past two months though I have gotten, literally, 3 notifs a day about the Second Stimulus that there has been no new info about especially while Congress is on break. Why do you keep torturing those of us who really need REAL info about the Stimulus because we cannot go back to work? It’s more than annoying, it almost feels like the app is rubbing it in our faces. If you read the comments under each of these articles I am not alone. Last article had 3,000 comments saying exactly what I’m saying. I am turning off notifs and will rely on local news app from now on. UPDATE: I have deleted the app. Not only am I still getting 5 articles a day about this stimulus package still and there’s no new news..... on top of that the app is linked through Facebook so any political article has some of worst commenters who spew hate speech and threaten violence. I spent a few days reporting the comments but it doesn’t matter. The most sane thing to do just delete. I get my news from large political outlets who don’t have uneducated people threatening people who don’t support the president’s narrative. Take out the Facebook link for comments (IE make us make an account) and quit sending the same articles 5 times a day and I will return.
What you’re really getting

By Hev Dawg

A feed of article headlines and pictures ranging from what Kim kardashian wore to bed (and you’re not gonna believe the reaction) to more serious presidential news. All taken from a diverse spectrum of prestigious news organizations to rinky-dink news outlets I am unfamiliar with that with the click of a story, you are instantly redirected to their news page. The reason for my rating, is that I wanted a more selective group of stories by which I mean I have no interest in knowing “Pregnant Katy Perry looks stunning in no-makeup selfie amid quarantine” or any “no cover” topics in my mind and have no way of weeding out of my feed. Nor do I enjoy when I (admittedly) don’t check first and am redirected from the app to the website of a news source most would find unsuitable for a work setting . Furthermore on the rare occasion I find a story I wish to look into, I click the link, the page nearly loads, crashes, automatically begins reloading, crashes a second time, when I am then left with a dimly lit, gray, blank page, and yet again no interesting story. With my options reduced to worthless page fillers and an eternity of refreshing only to never be able to read the article that made it worth the bandwidth used downloading this app in the first place, I fully intend on uninstalling the second I post this warning.
Daily CORONAVIRUS information (State links to DPH) outdated

By BridgettLeah

I can only speak for Georgia; the state's Department of Public Health (DPH) link has been outdated for over a month... the link takes you to a "Page Not Found" error. A little editorial work, or delegation thereof by the NewsBreak editors (or even allowing email feedback on the NewsBreak app - I tried that and they haven't even set up an email link for Support!!) and they would have known about the issue themselves without someone having to leave a shoddy review. Additionally, if you live Local to a tired old newspaper - the kind that literally will not allow a single story to be seen/read online (beyond the first couple of sentences) without your purchasing a subscription - you won't ever get any actual Local news. NewsBreak shouldn't even post these stories! It's basically an offshoot of clickbait...." Here's a breaking news story in your area!! [Reader clicks] Oopsy. You'll have to pay if you want to know how the investigation into the unsolved murder of a beloved 83 year old woman in your community is or isn't progressing, though the flailing TimesGeorgian wrote a headline that makes it sound like the sheriff has leads... it's just clickbait to make you buy a subscription and find out the sheriff is still baffled."
App needs a search and filter feature

By Foodhurtsme

App is pretty good, but needs the ability to search the headlines for keywords. Also needs a filter so that certain sources may always be omitted from results, e.g. always exclude CNN, etc. Also, the ability to mark story categories that you don’t want to see anymore would be useful. Say a story pops up about sex or gender issues, and you just prefer not to see those type of stories anymore. Also, big ads which appear as if they are stories are repeating or often shown. It would be nice to mark or tag the ad and say “I’ve seen this, I’m not interested, please don’t show it to me anymore thank you”. The app is surprisingly fast and responsive. There are so many news apps out there, this one seems to distinguish itself by it’s responsiveness — its very fast. The big ads appearing as if they were stories is an interesting take on generating ad revenue, but they are not obtrusive (at least in 2 column landscape mode on an iPad since real stories appear on the left, while the ads feed appears on the right column with other real stories.) The app needs more features as I have mentioned to make it more appealing.
Racist Community Cancels Out App’s Helpfulness

By Taylredwrds

This app compiles news ranging from national headlines to local news and does a decent job with that. Unfortunately I’m deleting it because I cannot stomach the HORRIBLE people in the comment sections. I’m confused why it’s so overwhelming. I would love to just disable the comments and not even have the option to click on them. I don’t even understand the idea of public commentary on news. If I wanted that, I could go to my social media and get it from my own community and educated people I trust, not some racist keyboard warriors. There should really be a moderator so people don’t have to run into hate speech on EVERY post. People calling the late John Lewis racist slurs on an article about his memorial. I’m sick to my stomach with some of the stuff I saw. I’ve seen where other reviewers have suggested removing the comment section as well, but it hasn’t been done and despite NB saying they have began moderating more ... there’s overwhelming evidence that they actually haven’t. This app is not worth subjecting myself to same ignorance and hostility I tried to get away from on FB. I’ll find something else that works for me. Maybe I’ll come back and check on it in a few months.. but I just can’t right now.
Good for a fast read.

By Gini D in Texas

I started out loving this app. It was great for my local news. It gave stories sometimes first, sometimes those I couldn’t get elsewhere. I started using this app in February. By April it started having so many bugs it was barely useable. If you actually get linked to a story shown, and then want to follow on to another shown below, it won’t follow the link. So then you think ok, I’ll open it in Safari, but then you get the first story and can’t find the one you wanted to read on the homepage of that news outlet to which have been directed. It is terribly frustrating. This app has the potential to be one of the best news apps for local news and has done a great job of keeping readers up to date on the corona virus and its ramifications in my area. But it is not quite at being fully integrated. I end up loving and hating it at the same time. I admit to being a news junkie so I always want to read MORE. Developer, please, bring this to the next level. For those who want a fast read of generally what’s happinging in your area, give this a try.
Has potential, but hostile comment sections are causing me to delete the app.

By WanderingGrace14

This app has potential. I like being able to quickly get news without going to Twitter or somewhere else. It’s a quick click. For the most part articles sent to notifications have been relevant (although the frequent click bait stimulus articles have been annoying). However, the comment sections are horrible. For some reason racist, anti-mask Trump supporters have flooded this app. They leave awful, aggressive comments and harass anyone who has a differing opinion. I have attempted to have civil conversations in the comment sections (and have seen others attempt to do the same) and we have only been met with aggressive hostility. These comment sections either need to be deleted or need to be heavily moderated. I haven’t seen an option to report comments either. So unfortunately, I will be deleting this app to protect my own mental health and caution others about downloading it. It’s draining. Keeping up with the news can be draining enough, but the hostility in the comments is disgusting. I will be checking out other news apps and am hoping to find one that hasn’t been overrun by hateful bigots.

External Links

Particle Media Inc. Official Website
Download for Free on On iTunes
Download for Android

Disclaimers:
This page was last edited on 2021-01-23.
Content is available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted.
News Break: Local Stories App content and materials are trademarks and copyrights of Particle Media Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved.
This site, Mycryptowiki, is not affiliated with Particle Media Inc..

News Break: Local Stories App Wiki