New York Times offers political news iPhone app with a catch

I was pretty excited to see the New York Times offer Election 2012, a compendium of news, polling results, candidate bios and a primary calendar.

The app was listed as free, but when you actually get it up and running you'll find it is severely limited. If you want all the content, you're going to have to pony up for either a $14.99 Smartphone subscription, or have an All Digital Access subscription for $34.99 a month. If you don't you'll have access to exactly 6 stories per day, and the rest of the content is locked.

There are other ways to get your fill of political news. Politico has iOS apps that are politically impartial and free. The Hill is another source of good political news and opinion. PoliticFact.com also offers a non-partisan fact checking iPhone app, and if you want your news with a Democratic, Republican, or Libertarian slant there are plenty of apps to serve you.

The Election 2012 app costs money and has ads as well, so I found it the worst of both worlds. If you are already a Times subscriber it's certainly worth a free download with lots of worthwhile content. I couldn't help but feel the app is simply bait to get you to subscribe to the Times. They have every right to ask for subscriptions for any product, but to advertise an app that is free but has very little content is something else again. If you don't want to pay for information that is mostly available elsewhere you have many other options.