Why You May Want to Consider the Park Record E-Edition

A couple of months ago I wrote about blocking ads using an iPhone and ad blocking’s impact on the Park Record. Since that time, I have been using iPhone ad blocking software and it makes the experience of browsing the Park Record on a mobile phone much better.

At the time, I mentioned subscribing to the Park Record in order to continue supporting the paper. After all, they need eat. This past week, I finally put my money where my mouth was and subscribed to the E-Edition of the Park Record. I didn’t like the sustainability issues with receiving a physical paper twice a week, so I went purely with the electronic version ($48 per year) and couldn’t be happier.

You can sign up for the E-Edition completely online here. The process is a little confusing but you begin by creating an account and then you add a subscription to that account. Once you provide your credit card details, you have immediate access to the last few months of papers. Better yet, you get the paper in its entirety. Every section seems to look identical to the paper version of the periodical. Finally, for those people who like to go back and search for specific topics, it seems to be completely searchable.

You can read the paper on a computer, tablet, or e-reader. I’ve tried on the a computer and an iPad. I’d say the best experience I’ve found is on an iPad or Surface Pro tablet. The portrait view available on these devices feels the most like a real paper to me. As for usability, it’s not quite as nice as having a physical paper you can lay out on the table and scan; however, it is pretty close. You can view a whole page at a time and pinch and zoom to read the page. If your eyesight isn’t quite as sharp as it once was, you can click the article, ad, etc. and it will take you to a zoomed in view, which is always easy to read.

All in all, I couldn’t be happier with my decision to spend $50 a year. If you are looking for a way to read the paper but don’t like the idea of killing trees, you may want to give it a try.