L.A Times releases iPhone apps for news, sports

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In addition to print, the Web and Amazon’s Kindle, the L.A. Times adds another medium to its arsenal. You can now get your daily dose of L.A. Times news on your iPhone and iPod Touch, thanks to two new applications.

[Updated, June 22, 2010, 3:15 p.m. A revamped L.A. Times iPhone app is available in the App Store.]

Once downloaded through Apple’s App Store, the L.A. Times News Reader (iTunes link) provides news stories from LATimes.com, formatted for mobile reading.

The default view lets users scroll through headlines by flicking left or right on the top half of the screen and browse sections on the lower half. To quickly browse headlines, users can switch to a list view using the button on the top right of the app.

The story reader includes the full text of the article and the ability to view the accompanying photos by flicking to the right of the headline. Users can also reposition the viewing area by dragging the center-right portion of the screen -- the space that looks like metallic emboss -- to provide more room for reading.

A separate app, called the L.A. Times Sports Reader (iTunes link) is very similar, but replaces the section’s browser with a sports scoreboard. Users can select individual games to get a more detailed breakdown of the action. Sports news is displayed in the same way as News Reader.

The premiere versions of the apps don’t currently offer online viewing for places where WiFi or wireless Internet access may not be available -- like on the subway or airplane. Both apps can be downloaded through iTunes or directly on the devices for free. There’s also an iPhone-formatted version of the website at latimes.com/iphone.

-- Mark Milian