SEC News Reader charges for what’s free online

There’s a lot of news on business and the economy to be gleaned from the Securities and Exchange Commission, but don’t bother paying for the iPhone apps.

SEC News Reader downloads news from the government agency, but the app only includes one feed – SEC-issued press releases. The press releases, streamed to your iPhone, are listed by headline, with a few lines thrown in to give an idea of each story’s subject. The app includes a tool to share stories through e-mail, which is useful. Otherwise, that share button is the end of SEC News Reader’s functions.

The same information on the SEC News Reader is available on the SEC’s web page. By opening the iPhone’s Safari browser, you can Google “SEC press releases” and get quickly to the same place. All the stories are available at Sec.gov, and they are all presented in the same way as the app. The SEC website also provides information that the News Reader doesn’t include, which you can get by using Safari.

To replicate the app’s sharing function, select and copy the web addresses from the Safari navigation bar into the iPhone’s e-mail client. That’s free, too.

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